Secondat

men holding rules

2012-01-21T09:47:00.003-05:00

Shakespeare puts words in Cleopatra's mouth that tell more about class attitudes in his time than in hers:

Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers shall
Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,
Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded.
And forc'd to drink their vapor.
(AC. V. ii. 209-13)

She's telling an attendant how she feels about the prospect of being acclaimed by plebeian Romans. Though less pungently, Coriolanus said much the same. So did Puck, quoted in my last post.[1]

It's not easy to generalize with any confidence about the attitudes of any class toward another. The attempt to locate the boundaries that separate the "us" of one class from the "them" of another can likewise be a daunting one. To Cleopatra the odiferous mass were all one. To themselves, they were many distinct groups.[2]

I'm interested in the mechanic who's holding a rule. One can imagine him as a carpenter or builder, maybe a shipwright or gunner, or he might have been a surveyor, navigator, or excise officer. Or he might have been a man who made rules — a person who made tools for a living. Or, still, he might have been one who taught others how to make and use the instruments of the trade.

In Shakespeare's time, to many of those who were gently born, these mechanic slaves holding rules would have been men who were presumed not to amount to much simply because they worked with their hands. But although many surely did, as apprentices and journeymen whose daily drudge was limited to performing tasks the master assigned, approximate this description, other men — the masters themselves — also held rules in their hands. They were builders, architects, land surveyors, gunnery officers, and others who used mathematical tools — rules — in their work. This, for example, shows a gentlemanly-looking surveyor (at right) and equally-well-decked-out helper (left) with an early version of the theodolite (described as a "Semy Circle set upon a perfeck square"), some levels (one of them using water boxes), and a target stick.

{Illustration of surveyors with their equipment from The English Improver Improved or the Survey of Husbandry Surveyed by Walter Blith (London, 1652); source: MSU.edu hst425}

This illustration shows a Portuguese navigator using a similar device (a forerunner of the sextant called a cosmolabe) to help draw a nautical chart. His instrument could not be used at sea, but more portable versions might be found on the distant ships, to be used with his charts when landmarks ashore were out of sight.

{A navigator and his instruments from the late sixteenth century; source: Os oitavos na História blog}

Another set of men holding rules were the men who made them. They were self-employed craftsmen or masters of small shops who possessed skill akin to goldsmiths or clock-makers or even, in those times, many plebeian artists, composers, and literary authors.

You can tell something of the skill possessed by one of these craftsmen, Henry Sutton, from this account by John Collins. Notice that Sutton needed no more than a verbal description in order to make a complex mathematical instrument. A mathematician "intimated his desires" and the craftsman, an engraver, "speedily found out the drawing" without further instruction. [3]

{From: The sector on a quadrant, or, a treatise containing the description and use of three several quadrants Accommodated for dyalling, for the resolving of all proportions instrumentally, and for the ready finding the hour and azimuth; with large cuts of each quadrant, printed from the original plates graved by Henry Sutton, by John Collins (printed by J.Macock, to be sold by George Hurlock, William Fisher and Henry Sutton mathematical instrument maker, 1658)}

This is Sutton's quadrant, made from a plate he engraved for Collins' book.

{source: Royal Museums, Greenwich}

Sutton was acclaimed one of the best, but others like him were skillful instrument makers, the technicians of their time. Here's one (quite late) description of their trade.[4]

{This reads: "Of the Mathematical and Optical Instrument, and Spectacle-Maker.

"THE Mathematical-Instrument-Maker makes all kind of Instruments constructed upon Mathematical Principles, and used in Philosophical Experiments: He makes Globes, Orrerys, Scales, Quadrants, Sectors, Sun-Dials of all Sorts and Dimensions, Air-Pumps, and the whole Apparatus belonging to Experimental Philosophy. He ought to have a Mathematically turned Head, and be acquainted with the Theory and Principles Upon which his several Instruments are constructed, as well as with the practical Use of them. He employs several different Hands, who are mere Mechanics, and know no more of the Use or Design of the Work they make, than the Engines with which the greatest Part of them are executed; therefore the Master must be a thorough Judge of Work in general.

"The Optical-Instrument-Maker is employed in making the various sorts of Telescopes, Microscopes of different Structures, Spectacles, and all other Instruments invented for the Help or Preservation of the Sight, and in which Glasses are used. He himself executes very little of the Work, except the grinding the Glasses: He grinds his Convex-Glasses in a Brass Concave Sphere, of a Diameter large in proportion to the Glass intended, and his Concave-Glasses upon a Convex Sphere of the same Metal: His Plane-Glasses he grinds upon a just Plane, in the same Manner as the common Glass-Grinder, mentioned Chap. XXXII. Sect. 4. He grinds them all with Sand and polishes them with Emery and Putty. The Cases and Machinery of his Instruments are made by different Workmen, according to their Nature, and he adjusts the Glasses to them.

"It is a very ingenious and profitable Business, and employs but a few Hands as Masters; The Journeymen earn, a Guinea a Week, and some more, according as they are accurate in their Trade. Such a Tradesman designed for a Master ought to have a pretty good Education, and a penetrating Judgment, to apprehend the Theory of the several Instruments he is obliged to make, and must be a thorough Judge of such Work as he employs others to execute. A Youth may be bound to either of these Trades any time between thirteen and fifteen Years of Age, and does not require, much Strength."}

Yet one more set of men with rules were teachers and authors of instructional texts who demonstrated the use of mathematical instruments.

John Collins himself was one of these. As an example, here is a list of his books on the use of mathematical instruments. It shows up in an "astronomical appendix" to a translation of The Sphere of Marcus Manilius by Sir Edward Sherburne, ca. 1675.

{an Account of John Collins's Mathematical Works Reprinted from the Appendix to Sir E. Sherburne's Translation of Bk. 1 of the Astronomicon of Manilius. Edited by N. Brook (Nathanael Brook: London, 1675?)}

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Some sources:

Navigation: The Mariner's Quadrant

Navigation, Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine

The identity of the mathematical practitioner in 16th-century England by Stephen Johnston in the proceedings of a 1995 conference in Duisburg: Irmgarde Hantsche (ed.), Der “mathematicus”: Zur Entwicklung und Bedeutung einer neuen Berufsgruppe in der Zeit Gerhard Mercators, Duisburger Mercator-Studien, vol. 4 (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1996), 93-120. It is closely based on material in the introduction to my thesis, and appears here by permission of Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer.

De republica anglorum, a discourse on the Commonwealth of England by Thomas Smith, ed. by L. Alston with a preface by F.W. Maitland (Cambridge, the University Press, 1906)

"Christs Teares over Ierusalem" by Thomas Nashe (1593) in Life in Shakespeare's England a book of Elizabethan prose comp. by John Dover Wilson (Cambridge University press, 1913) Extract: "In London, the rich disdain the poor. The courtier the citizen. The citizen the country man. One occupation disdaineth another. The merchant the retailer. The retailer the craftsman. The better sort of craftsmen the baser. The shoemaker the cobbler. The cobbler the carman. One nice dame disdains her next neighbour should have that furniture to her house, or dainty dish or device, which she wants. She will not go to church, because she disdains to mix herself with base company, and cannot have her close pew by herself. She disdains to wear that everyone wears, or hear that preacher which everyone hears. So did Jerusalem disdain God's prophets, because they came in the likeness of poor men. She disdained Amos, because he was a keeper of oxen, as also the rest, for they were of the dregs of the people. But their disdain prospered not with them. Their house, for their disdain, was left desolate unto them."

"Itinerary" by Fynes Moryson (1617) in Life in Shakespeare's England a book of Elizabethan prose comp. by John Dover Wilson (Cambridge University press, 1913)

The London tradesman; Being a compendious view of all the trades, professions, arts, both liberal and mechanic, now practised in the cities of London and Westminster. Calculated for the information of parents, and instruction of youth in their choice of business by R. Campbell, esq (London, printed by T. Gardner, 1747)

The making of the English middle class; business, society, and family life in London, 1660-1730 by Peter Earle (University of California Press, 1989)

Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 29 May 1660

The sphere of Marcus Manilius made an English poem with annotations and an astronomical appendix by Marcus Manilius, translated by Sir Edward Sherburne (London, printed for Nathanael Brooke, 1675)

"A Catalogue of Astronomers" in the work cited just above.

"The Institution of Residential Investment in Seventeenth-Century London" by William C. Baer, The Business History Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 515-551 (Harvard) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4127797

Biographies in John Aubrey's Brief Lives

The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England by E.G.R. Taylor (Cambridge, 1954)

Shakespeare from the margins by Patricia A. Parker (University of Chicago Press, 1996)

Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain by Keith Wrightson (Yale University Press, 2002)

Manilius and his intellectual background by Katharina Volk (Oxford University Press, 2009)

The English Improver Improved or the Survey of Husbandry Surveyed by Walter Blith (London, 1652)

Marcus Manilius on wikipedia

"The Search for the 'Middle Sort of People' in England, 1600-1800" by H. R. French, The Historical Journal, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 277-293 (Cambridge University Press) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3021022

Stereographic projection in wikipedia

Hour angle in wikipedia

Azimuth in wikipedia

Solar azimuth angle in wikipedia

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Notes:

[1] Patricia Parker writes well about the disdain of gentles for their lesser bretheren. See Shakespeare from the margins by Patricia A. Parker (University of Chicago Press, 1996).

[2] The making of the English middle class; business, society, and family life in London, 1660-1730 by Peter Earle (University of California Press, 1989)

[3] Here is the relevant description: A limb is the outer edge of a sphere, in this case the earth.

Being in conference with my loving friend M. Thomas Harvie, he told me, that he had often drawn a Quadrant upon Paper pasteboard, &c. derived by himself, and never done by any man before, as to his knowledge, from the Stereographick Projection, which for a particular Latitude, would give the Hour in the equal Limb, and would also perform the Azimuth very well; and but that it was so particular, was very desirous to have one made in Brass for his own use by an Instrument Maker: whereto replying, that with the access of some other Lines to be used with Compasses, it might be rendered general for finding both the Hour and the Azimuth in the equal Limb: He thereupon intimated his desires to M. Sutton, promising within a fortnight after their conference, to draw up full directions for the making thereof. But M. Sutton having very good practise and experience in drawing Projections, speedily found out the drawing of that Projection, either in a Quadrant or a Semicircle, without the assistance of the promised directions, and accordingly, hath drawn the shape of it.
-- The sector on a quadrant, or, a treatise containing the description and use of three several quadrants by John Collins (printed by J.Macock, to be sold by George Hurlock, William Fisher and Henry Sutton mathematical instrument maker, 1658)

[4] This description comes from a book published a century after the period of which I'm writing. I couldn't find anything more closely contemporaneous. Although it does not contradict writers who published in the middle of the seventeenth century and seems to jibe with sources from the period, I can't really say it's as good a description of the one time as of the other. In the preceding chapter the author also describes the watch- and clock-making trades. My source is Chapter 55 in The London tradesman; Being a compendious view of all the trades, professions, arts, both liberal and mechanic, now practised in the cities of London and Westminster. Calculated for the information of parents, and instruction of youth in their choice of business by R. Campbell, esq (London, printed by T. Gardner, 1747)

Note on reproductions: Where not in the public domain, reproductions made in the blog post appear in accordance with fair use provisions of US copyright law. If you believe I have abused the privilege of fair use, please let me know.

mathematical practitioners

2012-01-03T13:54:00.009-05:00

In his criticism of the universities for teaching subjects that have little practical value, John Webster asks (rhetorically) "What is Grammar, Lodgick, Rhetorick, Poesie, Politicks, Ethicks, Oeconomicks, nay Metaphysicks? if they serve to no other use than bare and fruitless speculation?" In arguing that the universities should emphasize mathematics and the empirical sciences which have some practical use he tacitly acknowledges that scholars can learn some mathematics at Oxford or Cambridge, but he says this math is the wrong kind. He asks "Can the Mathematical Sciences, the most noble, useful, and of the greatest certitude of all the rest, serve for no more profitable end, than speculatively and abstractively to be considered of?"[1]

He says, in other words, the math that's taught should be useful. Regarding this more profitable mathematics he asks, "How could the life of man be happily led, nay how could men in a manner consist without it? Truly I may justly say of it as Cicero of Philosophy, it hath taught men to build houses, to live in Cities and walled Towns; it hath taught men to measure and divide the Earth; more facilely to negotiate and trade one with another: From whence was found out and ordered the art of Navigation, the art of War, Engins, Fortifications, all mechanick operations, were not all these and innumerable others the progeny of this never-sufficiently praised Science?"

Webster was a preacher and not a particularly astute scholar. As I pointed out in my last post, he joined many of his contemporaries in believing magic, alchemy, and astrology to be subjects of equal weight with mathematics and natural philosophy (as what we call simply science was then called). In doing so he echoes a man, John Dee, who lived half a century before him and whom he calls a "myrror of manifold learning."[2] In a well-known preface to the first English translation of Euclid's Elements, Dee, like Webster, praises math and science as topics for university study and, just as much, magic, alchemy, and astrology.[3] And, like Webster, he says the application of mathematics is at least as important as is abstract speculation. In his words, "the very chief perfection (almost) of Numbers Practicall use" can be attained by the "mixtyng of speculation and practise."

In the preface Dee catalogs many of math's practical uses — from merchants' reliance on arithmetic, to the tangible uses of algebra[4], and to the many uses of geometry made by surveyors, military commanders, navigators, builders, excise men, and others. With regret Dee says he's been writing against a deadline ("the Printer, hath looked for this Præface, a day or two") and tells us his subject "is so ample and wonderfull, that, an whole yeare long, one might finde fruitfull matter therin, to speake of: and also in practise, is a Threasure endeles."

Despite the passion he shows for his subject in the preface, Dee's life was devoted more to the intangible aspects of math than the material ones. It's true he used Euclidian geometry to solve problems of navigation and trained the crews of ships so they could find their way across the Atlantic in early voyages to North America, but he believed his life's mission to be the uncovering of the spiritual forms underlying the material world. To him math was a language for use in speaking with angels. He associated its abstract beauty with mystical powers of divination which he claimed to possess.

Of the angelical beauty of mathematics he wrote: "All thinges ... do appeare to be Formed by the reason of Numbers. For this was the principall example or patterne in the minde of the Creator. ... By Numbers propertie ... we may ... ascend, and mount up (with Speculative winges) in spirit, to behold in the Glas of Creation, the Forme of Formes, the Exemplar Number of all thinges Numerable: both visible and inuisible, mortall and immortall, Corporall and Spirituall."[5]

The only son of a minor member of the royal court, he had a brilliant career at university and possessed both inclination and sufficient means to extend his education after graduation through extensive travel in Europe. Not himself wealthy, he was able to make himself useful to wealthy members of the aristocracy of England and the European continent. There appears to have been no snobbishness in him however. At a time when "gentles" treated unlettered artisans with contempt, scorn, or — at best — indifference, and when dramatists could be sure to draw laughs by poking fun at men whom they characterized as "rude mechanicals"[6], Dee was unusual in the sympathetic recognition he gave to the emerging class of "Common Artificer."

He closes the Preface by citing advantages of instruction — not in the Latin of the universities but in the English of the shop and street — made available to London tradesmen, many of whom were the first of their families to have acquired the ability to read. Of the book in which the Preface appears — Billingsley's translation of Euclid's Elements (which, as I say, was the first version to be published in English) — he writes: "[H]ow many a Common Artificer, is there, in these Realmes of England and Ireland, that dealeth with Numbers, Rule, & Cumpasse: Who, with their owne Skill and experience, already had, will be hable (by these good helpes and informations) to finde out, and devise, new workes, straunge Engines, and Instrumentes: for sundry purposes in the Common Wealth? or for private pleasure? and for the better maintayning of their owne estate?"

This title page to Billingsley's Euclid depicts some of the practical applications of mathematics to which Dee refers. (It's also, you'll notice, not prudish in depicting naked bodies.)

{The title page of Henry Billingsley's translation of Euclid's Elements (1570), with preface by John Dee; source: wikipedia}

It's generally thought that Dee's Preface and all of Billingsley's Euclid helped set in motion a gradual shift in attitudes toward mathematics and the book's readers appear to have fostered the growth of applied mathematics outside the universities. As a partial result, it's pretty clear that in the century following its appearance mathematical practitioners — the men who employed mathematics in their work as well as the printers and authors of practical math texts, the makers of technical instruments, and the technical advisors who assisted university-trained natural philosophers — became more prosperous and grew somewhat in social standing.[6]

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Some sources:

The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England by E.G.R. Taylor (Cambridge, 1954)

John Dee's "Mathematicall Praeface": A Sixteenth Century Classification of the Mathematical Arts and Sciences by Charles St. Clair (pdf)

The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara by John Dee from Sir Henry Billingsley's first English version of Euclid's Elements, 1570

"John Dee" by Thompson Cooper in Dictionary of national biography ed. by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (Smith, Elder, & co., 1888)

"John Dee and His Supplication to Queen Mary" by P. Evans Lewin, Woolwich Public Libraries in The Library world, Vol. 5 (Library Supply Co., 1903) Extract: 'Whilst at Cambridge he only slept four hours every night, and spent eighteen hours of the day in study. So great was his knowledge, that his acquaintance was eagerly sought by such men as Gemma Frisius, Mercator, and Gaspar a Mirca, all of whom he visited in his twentyfirst year. Even at this period he was looked on askance, for he relates that in 1547 he "sett forth" at Trinity College a Greek comedy of Aristophanes, "with the performance of the Scarabaeus, his flying up to Jupiter's palace with a man and his basket of victuals on her back, whereat was great wondering and many vain reports spread about." This, probably, was only a piece of stage mechanism suitable to the crude ideas of the time and in keeping with Greene's instructions in "Tamburlaine" — "exit Venus; or if you can conveniently let a chair come down from the top of the stage and draw her up."'

"The Mistaking of 'the Mathematicks' for Magic in Tudor and Stuart England" by J. Peter Zetterberg in The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1980), pp. 83-97. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539477

"Science and Education in the Seventeenth Century: The Webster-Ward Debate" by G. Allen, reviewed by Theodore M. Brown in Isis, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Sep., 1973), pp. 422-424. (The University of Chicago Press) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2297

A general dictionary: historical and critical, in which a new and accurate translation of that of the celebrated Mr. Bayle, with the corrections and observations printed in the late edition at Paris, is included; and interspersed with several thousand lives never before published. The whole containing the history of the most illustrious persons of all ages and nations particularly those of Great Britain and Ireland, distinguished by their rank, actions, learning and other accomplishments. With reflections on such passages of Bayle, as seem to favor scepticism and the Manichee system, Volume 10 by Pierre Bayle, John Peter Bernard, Thomas Birch, John Lockman, George Sale, Alexis Gaudin, Anthelme Tricaud, Pierre Desmaizeaux (Printed by J. Bettenham, 1741)

Billingsley Euclid in Mathematical Treasures by Frank J. Swetz and Victor J. Katz

Shakespeare from the margins by Patricia A. Parker (University of Chicago Press, 1996)

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Notes:

[1] My quotes from John Webster come from his Academiarum Examen: Academiarum examen, or the examination of academies wherein is discussed and examined the matter, method and customes of academick and scholastick learning by John Webster (Calvert, 1654).

[2] My quotes from John Dee come from his The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara by John Dee from Sir Henry Billingsley's first English version of Euclid's Elements, 1570. I have modernized Dee's use of the letter "u" where we would put "v" and given the "long s" (ſ) as "s".

[3] Dee's passion for mathematics leads him to claim (quoting Boetius) that "All thinges (which from the very first originall being of thinges, have bene framed and made) do appeare to be Formed by the reason of Numbers. For this was the principall example or patterne in the minde of the Creator." And further: "By Numbers propertie therefore, of us, by all possible meanes, (to the perfection of the Science) learned, we may both winde and draw our selves into the inward and deepe search and vew, of all creatures distinct vertues, natures, properties, and Formes: And also, farder, arise, clime, ascend, and mount up (with Speculatiue winges) in spirit, to behold in the Glas of Creation, the Forme of Formes, the Exemplar Number of all thinges Numerable: both visible and invisible, mortall and immortall, Corporall and Spirituall."

[4] Of algebra he says: "This Rule, and Arithmetike of Algiebra, is so profound, so generall and so (in maner) conteyneth the whole power of Numbers Application practicall: that mans witt, can deale with nothyng, more proffitable about numbers: nor match, with a thyng, more mete for the divine force of the Soule, (in humane Studies, affaires, or exercises) to be tryed in."

[5] Here's the full quote: "All thinges (which from the very first originall being of thinges, have bene framed and made) do appeare to be Formed by the reason of Numbers. For this was the principall example or patterne in the minde of the Creator. O comfortable allurement, O ravishing perswasion, to deale with a Science, whose Subiect, is so Auncient, so pure, so excellent, so surmounting all creatures, so used of the Almighty and incomprehensible wisdome of the Creator, in the distinct creation of all creatures: in all their distinct partes, properties, natures, and vertues, by order, and most absolute number, brought, from Nothing, to the Formalitie of their being and state. By Numbers propertie therefore, of us, by all possible meanes, (to the perfection of the Science) learned, we may both winde and draw our selves into the inward and deepe search and vew, of all creatures distinct vertues, natures, properties, and Formes: And also, farder, arise, clime, ascend, and mount up (with Speculative winges) in spirit, to behold in the Glas of Creation, the Forme of Formes, the Exemplar Number of all thinges Numerable: both visible and inuisible, mortall and immortall, Corporall and Spirituall."

[6] A Midsummer Night's Dream: Act 3, Scene 2

PUCK
6 My mistress with a monster is in love.
7 Near to her close and consecrated bower,
8 While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,
9 A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
10 That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,
11 Were met together to rehearse a play
12 Intended for great Theseus' nuptial-day.
13 The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort,
14 Who Pyramus presented, in their sport
15 Forsook his scene and enter'd in a brake
16 When I did him at this advantage take,
17 An ass's nole I fixed on his head:
18 Anon his Thisby must be answered,
19 And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,
20 As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
21 Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
22 Rising and cawing at the gun's report,
23 Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
24 So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;
25 And, at our stamp, here o'er and o'er one falls;
26 He murder cries and help from Athens calls.

[7] Stephen Johnston makes this point. See The identity of the mathematical practitioner in 16th-century England from the proceedings of a 1995 conference in Duisburg: Irmgarde Hantsche (ed.), Der “mathematicus”: Zur Entwicklung und Bedeutung einer neuen Berufsgruppe in der Zeit Gerhard Mercators, Duisburger Mercator-Studien, vol. 4 (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1996), 93-120. It is closely based on material in the introduction to my thesis, and appears here by permission of Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer. See also: The making of the English middle class; business, society, and family life in London, 1660-1730 by Peter Earle (University of California Press, 1989)

early-modern science

2011-12-26T08:16:00.007-05:00

It's generally pretty easy to distinguish fantasy from reality. We can tell the difference between intuited knowledge and knowledge gained through observation and careful measurement. We know that magicians perform tricks without aid from (probably diabolical) higher powers. Astrology and astronomy are to us two very different things; so too alchemy and chemistry, numerology and mathematics. But a few hundred years ago these distinctions were fuzzier.

As late medieval merged into early modern times, European men (almost always just men) started to correct serious mistakes that earlier generations had made about the natural world around them and the celestial bodies above. Some of these mistakes stemmed from religious beliefs, others from the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers and their successors. By questioning received authority, carefully examining natural phenomena, making complex mathematical calculations, and faithfully recording their findings these men transformed a scholastic philosophy into a new natural philosophy. The intellectual freedom achieved by this practice of scientific demonstration (as some of them were beginning to call it) was revolutionary in its magnitude, but not in the speed with which it took place.

Just as the transition from scholasticism and faith-based cosmology was evolutionary, so too the transition from belief in astrology, alchemy, and an ability to communicate with supernatural powers as legitimate tools for interacting with the natural world. Surprisingly, this second transition — scientists' rejection of hermetic beliefs — was even more gradual than their rejection of received truth from ancient authorities and of religious superstition (the "vain religion" of the schoolmen, as one of them put it).[1]

The men whom we now call scientists would study the real world using careful observation and rigorous measurement, but they would also, for example, use astrology to cast one another's natal charts. And the men and women who paid the bills — aristocratic or even royal patrons, wealthy merchants, and large land owners — expected their scientist clients to produce marvels — things out of the ordinary — to show off to their friends. Or, just as likely, they expected predictions of future events that might be advantageous to them.

On the sheet of paper I've reproduced below Galileo Galilei sketched the beginnings of a birth chart for a patron, Cosimo II, which Galileo used to show that Cosimo's future was an auspicious one. At the bottom of the page he drew the moon in its waxing phase at it appeared on January 19, 1609.

{Galileo’s sketch of the waxing Moon, as viewed on 19th January 1609 through his x20 telescope, on the same sheet as his first draft of the Cosimo II de Medici nativity; source: The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena, Proc. of 4th INSAP Conference, Oxford, Ed. N. Campion, Bristol 2004}

There are other instances of this service of natural philosophers to those they wished to flatter. For example Johannes Kepler created horoscopes for the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, and Tycho Brahe made annual charts for the Danish king, Fredrik, and the royal princes. Here is one of the birthday charts that Tycho Brahe made for Prince Christian in 1577.

{source: tychobrahesverden.dk}

Early modern natural philosophers and mathematicians would also prepare genitures for themselves and their friends. Without at first recognizing what they were, I encountered these tables when working in manuscript collections containing correspondence among Isaac Newton and other prominent mathematicians of the late seventeenth century. I also noticed that a writer of brief biographies, like the gossipy John Aubrey, might inquire about the exact moment of a man's birth, not having reason to do so except the making of an accurate birth chart for him.

{Detail from the entry for John Collins in "Brief lives", chiefly of contemporaries by John Aubrey, ed. by Andrew Clark, Andrew, Volume: 1 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1898)}

The Elizabethan magus, John Dee, presents an extreme example of a mathematician and astronomer who was also a self-proclaimed astrologer, alchemist, and practitioner of magic arts. Dee, among many other similar works, cast a horoscope to determine a favorable day for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.[2] Here's a chart that John Dee made for himself.

{Natal chart made for himself by John Dee; source: C.U.R.A. The International Astrology Research Center}

Here's a final example of belief in astrology, astronomy, and magic persisting alongside the new natural philosophy. In the mid-1650s a man named John Webster (not the famous author but a chaplain of Parliamentarian forces in the English Civil War) wrote a book criticising the archaic curriculum of the English universities. In it he said the subjects taught were hopelessly — indeed dangerously — out-of-date and devoid of usefulness. Rather than forcing students to learn dead languages or memorize the writings of Aristotle and other ancient and more recent scholastic authors, he says they should be taught mathematics and experimental science.[3]

Webster says "Surely natural Philosophy hath a more noble, sublime, and ultimate end, than to rest in speculation, abstractive notions, mental operations, and verball disputes: for as it should lead us to know and understand the causes, properties, operations and affections of nature..." He acclaims applied mathematics — which, he points out, benefits merchants, mariners, surveyors, mechanics and others — and he condemns theoretical mathematics as merely speculative and abstract.[4] He heaps praise on chemistry, physics, and medicine as subjects of study that are "sublime, and never sufficiently praised."

But he gives as much in the way of accolades to the esoteric subjects of magic, alchemy, and astrology. He calls magic a "noble, and almost devine Science." To him, alchemy is "the most admirable and soul-ravishing knowledge of the three great Hypostatical principles of nature." And astrology is "high, noble, excellent, and useful." As you see in this extract, he lets himself be carried away on the subject.

{transcription: "What shall I say of the Science or art of Astrology, shall the blind fury of Misotechnists, and malicious spirits deter me from giving it the commendations that it deserves? shall the Acadamies who have not only sleighted and neglected it, but also scoffed at it, terrifie me from expressing my thoughts of so noble and beneficial a Science? shall the arguments of Picus Mirandula, and others, who have bitterly inveighed against it, fright me from owning the truth? shall the thundering Pulpit men, who would have all mens faith pinned upon their sleeves, and usually condemn all things they understand not, make me be silent in so just a cause? No truly, I must needs defend that which my judgment evidences to me to be laudable, and profitable; not but that I utterly condemn the ignorance, knavery, and impostorage of many pretending Sciolists, that abuse the same; but shall the art of medicine or Chymistry be condemned, and rejected, because many ignorant Empericks and false Alcumists do profess them? Surely no, let the blame be upon the protestors, not upon the profession it self. For the art it self is high, noble, excellent and useful to all mankind, and is a study not unbeseeming the best wits, and greatest Scholars, and no way offinsive to God or true Religion. And therefore I cannot, without detracting from worth and vertue, pass without a due Eulogy in the commendation of my learned and industrious Countrymen, Mr. Ashmole, Mr. William Lilly, Mr. Booker, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Culpepper, and others, who have taken unwearied pains for the resuscitation and promotion of this noble Science, and with much patience against many unworthy scandals have laboured to propagate it to posterity, and if it were not beyond the present scope I have in hand, I should have given sufficient reasons in the vindication of Astrology." [Acad. Examen, p. 51]; source: Academiarum examen, or the examination of academies wherein is discussed and examined the matter, method and customes of academick and scholastick learning by John Webster (Calvert, 1654)}

-----

Some sources:

"Celestial Offerings: Astrological Motifs in the Dedicatory Letters of Kepler's Astronomia Nova and Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius" by H. Darrel Rutkin in Secrets of nature: astrology and alchemy in early modern Europe ed. by Anthony Grafton (MIT Press, 2001)

Galileo's Astrology by Nick KIollerstrom on skyscript.co.uk

How Galileo Dedicated the Moons of Jupiter to Cosimo II de Medici by Nick Kollerstrom, The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena, Proc. of 4th INSAP Conference, Oxford, Ed. N. Campion, Bristol 2004, pp. 165-181.

Tycho Brahe och Astrology

John Dee's "Mathematicall Praeface": A Sixteenth Century Classification of the Mathematical Arts and Sciences by Charles St. Clair, Norman

The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara by John Dee from Sir Henry Billingsley's first English version of Euclid's Elements, 1570

Isaac Newton and the Transmutation of Alchemy An Alternative View of the Scientific Revolution by Philip Ashley Fanning (North Atlantic Books, 2009)

Academiarum examen, or the examination of academies, wherein is discussed and examined the matter, method and customes of academick and scholastick learning by John Webster (London, Printed for Giles Calvert, 1654)

"Education" by J.W. Adamson in The Cambridge history of English literature , in 18 Volumes (1907–21) Volume IX, From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift ed. by Adolphus Ward and Alfred Waller (Cambridge, the University Press, 1912)

"Brief lives", chiefly of contemporaries by John Aubrey, ed. by Andrew Clark, Andrew, Volume: 1 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1898)

"Brief Lives" by John Aubrey, ed. by Andrew Clark (Oxford, At the Clarendon Press, 1898)

Biographies in John Aubrey's Brief Lives

Only 26 and already a professor! in Renaissance Mathematicus

"Scientific Studies in the English Universities of the Seventeenth Century" by Phyllis Allen, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Apr., 1949) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707416

"John Dee" by Thompson Cooper in Dictionary of national biography ed. by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (Smith, Elder, & co., 1888)

"John Dee and His Supplication to Queen Mary" by P. Evans Lewin, Woolwich Public Libraries in The Library world, Vol. 5 (Library Supply Co., 1903) Extract: 'Whilst at Cambridge he only slept four hours every night, and spent eighteen hours of the day in study. So great was his knowledge, that his acquaintance was eagerly sought by such men as Gemma Frisius, Mercator, and Gaspar a Mirca, all of whom he visited in his twentyfirst year. Even at this period he was looked on askance, for he relates that in 1547 he "sett forth" at Trinity College a Greek comedy of Aristophanes, " with the performance of the Scarabaeus, his flying up to Jupiter's palace with a man and his basket of victuals on her back, whereat was great wondering and many vain reports spread about." This, probably, was only a piece of stage mechanism suitable to the crude ideas of the time and in keeping with Greene's instructions in "Tamburlaine "—" exit Venus; or if you can conveniently let a chair come down from the top of the stage and draw her up."'

"The Mistaking of 'the Mathematicks' for Magic in Tudor and Stuart England" by J. Peter Zetterberg in The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1980), pp. 83-97. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539477

"Science and Education in the Seventeenth Century: The Webster-Ward Debate" by G. Allen; reviewed by Theodore M. Brown in Isis, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Sep., 1973), pp. 422-424. (The University of Chicago Press) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/229755

Hermeticism in wikipedia

John Aubrey in wikipedia

Brief Lives in wikipedia

---------

Notes:

[1] The quote comes from Academiarum examen, or the examination of academies, wherein is discussed and examined the matter, method and customes of academick and scholastick learning by John Webster (London, Printed for Giles Calvert, 1654)

[2] "John Dee" by Thompson Cooper in Dictionary of national biography ed. by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (Smith, Elder, & co., 1888)

[3] Webster's diatribe was criticized by scholars who pointed to instances where the universities were teaching the new subjects. But as Phyllis Allen and others have pointed out the chief emphasis of education at Oxford and Cambridge remained as it had been. Mathematics and natural philosophy were emphatically secondary subjects of education. "As a rule, the tutor rather than the college had the greatest influence upon the student's work. A good tutor could do much for his pupil by making wise choices in the question of reading matter. Most tutors were not interested in the new experimental sciences, and some even overlooked the work of ancient scientists. One Cambridge tutor insisted that 'Mathematics and Natural Philosophy [were] not to be hurried.' Judging by the small amount of either that the average student seems to have learned, most tutors must rarely have found time to pursue these studies in an unhurried manner. ... Aside from these classics [Aristotle, Ptolomy, Euclid, ...] there were a few modern texts available. In algebra, the more advanced undergraduate could read Thomas Hariot's Artis Analyticae Praxis (London, 1631), in which he introduced Francis Vieta's methods to England. In arithmetic, a popular text was Edmund Wingate's Arithmetique Made Easie (London, 1630). For geometry, Henry Billingsley's translation of Euclid was used, together with Christopher Clavius' commentaries upon the same author, and John Speidell's Geometrical Extraction (London, 1616), which John Aubrey says "made young men have a love to geometry." -- "Scientific Studies in the English Universities of the Seventeenth Century" by Phyllis Allen, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Apr., 1949) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707416

[4] Webster cites John Dee as a main source for his comments on the value of applied mathematics and praises him as "that myrror of manifold learning." -- Academiarum examen, or the examination of academies, wherein is discussed and examined the matter, method and customes of academick and scholastick learning by John Webster (London, Printed for Giles Calvert, 1654)

Mrs. Collins

2011-12-14T10:06:00.013-05:00

I've been studying the life and works of a man who lived in the middle half of the seventeenth century. He was sufficiently well known to have been written up by a succession of biographers, but their sources of information are paltry and all their accounts are necessarily brief. This late example can stand for all: Collins, John (1625-1683) by Agnes Mary Clerke in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 11.

Collins rarely wrote about himself and his family. This paragraph in the draft of a lengthy letter on mathematical topics is one of only a few brief accounts.

{Extract from a letter of John Collins to Dr. John Beale, August 20, 1672. Beale was one of the earliest fellows elected to the Royal Society in the early 1660s. Transcription: "I married the younger daughter of two only children of Mr. Wm. Austin, who, being one of his Majesty's cooks, when P. of Wales, was, by Dr. Wilkins' means, made and continued master cook of Wadham college in Oxford, during the late troubles, and is now master cook, to his Majesty, of the Lord s k[itchen]. I live at my said father-in-law's house in Petty [France], W[estminster], over against the Adam and Eve. He is now in Cheshire with his other daughter, and may return, if God please, a little after Michaelmas. Whilst in Oxford he was much esteemed for his great skill in simpling, gardening, planting trees, flowers, &c. which I mention, as understanding your good knowledge and delight therein."}

He fathered seven children, about whom nothing is known. He numbered them only once, in a letter dated May 23, 1677, to a parish priest whose skill in mathematics he admired. Five years later he said that even in 1672 he had "a great family to maintain," meaning wife and children.[1]

This latter statement was a report of a request he made that the government pay him arrears in salary and pension that were owed. Here's the relevant section in the clerk's "secretary" hand.

{Source: Manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu at Beaulieu House. Transcription: "In June 1670 Collins was employed as chief Clerke in the Councill of Plantations under Mr Slingesby as Secretary, who promised to procure the said Collins a Salary of 200£ per annum, but a Committee of the Councill would agree to allow no more than 150£, and was so ill paid that at Michaelmas 1672 there was about 300£ due to him, he having a great family to maintain, was necessitated to coame that and seeke other employments for obtaining a livelyhood, and happy it was he then lost it, in regard others so employed, have been so ill paid, and Collins hath yet owing to him on that account 150£. Moreover whilst Collins was there employed he kept most of the Bookes, which are many, his hand Writing being better liked that others."}

We don't know the date of his wedding, but if Collins had a great family to maintain in 1672 he must have been married some years before then. He can't have married while serving on shipboard in the Mediterranean (1642-49) so it's reasonable to suppose the event took place in the 1650s. Still, I think the early 1660s are a better guess.

We know for sure that the event took place before April 23, 1663, because on that date a mathematical practitioner wrote to Collins and in closing he sent his "respects to yourself and Mrs. Collins." I think it would have taken place after the summer of 1660. That was when her father was appointed a chief cook to the King. That job brought him and his family to London from Oxford and Collins was then in London and had been for some time.

Regardless of their wedding date, we can be sure that Collins and his wife were happily married because the correspondent goes on to style her as his "second self." The phrase suggests that the author, Michael Dary, perceived an unusually close relationship between man and wife. It was used by others in Collins' time (and later) but as between friends not marriage partners. You can see this in the examples given in the Oxford English Dictionary. And you guess how infrequently such closeness was apparent between man and wife in reading the forceful admonition of William Penn, speaking out against the usual practices of his time: "But in Marriage do thou be wise; prefer the Person before Money, Vertue before Beauty, the Mind before the Body: Then thou hast a Wife, a Friend, a Companion, a Second Self; one that bears an equal Share with thee in all thy Toyls and Troubles."[2]

At the time Collins married, both he and his fiancée were modestly well off, "middling" in the terminology of the time. Afterwards his personal finances advanced and declined in a pattern similar to the fluctuations of the finances of the royal court and, at the time of his death in 1683, he was owed quite a bit in suspended pension and other deferred government payments.[3]

His wife's name was Bellona. As he says in the letter quoted above, she was the younger of two daughters, born into a small family that was headed by a master chef, William Austin. During her youth William Austin was, first, the chief cook in the kitchen of the Prince of Wales — Charles, eldest son of king Charles I — and then, during the years of the Civil War and Commonwealth, chief cook in the kitchen at Oxford's Wadham College.[4] When Charles became King Charles II, Austin was appointed his chief cook of the "household" kitchen. The household kitchen was "below stairs" and it fed not the King and those who dined at his table, but rather all others who ate at the king's expense: staff, courtiers, hangers-on, and even members of the House of Lords when they gathered in Parliament.[5]

By the time of her father's appointment to serve the king Bellona was probably of an age at which she have been expected to seek a husband and start a family. We don't know when she met John Collins. It's likely they encountered one another in the late 1630s, during her father's service to the Prince of Wales. Then in his teens, Collins was employed as a "servant's servant" to help John Marr, who was clerk in the kitchen where Bellona's father was master cook. If not Bellona herself, Collins certainly was acquainted with William Austin at that time. Whether or not they met when young, they're likely, as I say, to have bonded sometime after August 1660 when Austin returned from Oxford to London on his appointment as head of the new King's household kitchen.[6]

Not long after the time I suppose the two to have begun courting, Bellona sought and received appointment as a laundress for the intended wife of King Charles. The treaty of marriage was signed June 23, 1661, but the royal wedding did not take place (in three ceremonies) until the following spring. Bellona received her appointment in between, on November 14, 1661. It was no menial position. She was "laundress of the board" and her job was both to supervise and to some degree carry out the cleaning and pressing of the queen's table linen. There were two other laundresses of the board: one of the king's "privy" table and another of the household. The three had help from at least four pages, probably more, as well as a yeoman and a couple of grooms. Since meals consumed at the queen's table were smaller than at the household table and both smaller and less elaborate than at the king's table, Bellona would have needed less of this help than the other two.[7]

Not surprisingly, the salary of the laundress of the queen's board was a few pounds lower than that of the two others. It does not seem like very much money at all — £18 5s a year — but it was supplemented by "board wages," or money paid out in lieu of room and board and these board wages may have enhanced her income quite a bit. The amount of her board wages isn't recorded, but when in 1685 the board wages of the laundress to the household table were stopped, her salary was increased to £120. If Bellona's total income from her job was even approaching £100 a year she was doing quite well by standards of the time. In fact she would be doing very well whether she was then a single woman living at home or a newly married one setting up her own household.[8]

Competition for the position was intense. After Charles was crowned he and his court officers were inundated with requests from people who had suffered by their adherence to the royal cause during the Civil War and Commonwealth period. This extract from the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, for May 1662, shows three formal requests for the job.[9]

The three were occasioned by the wedding of Charles and Catherine in Lisbon by proxy in April 1662. The petitioners evidently did not know (or did not care) that Bellona had received her appointment half a year before. The record of her appointment is laconic.[10]

As a child of the royal household Bellona would have grown up with many of the people with whom she now served. However she would not have been personally known to any of the high officers of the court, and their reference to her as "Mary, jun." shows that they did not know her given name (presumably in their ignorance they used her mother's name — hence the "jun.").

Although most single women were in the workforce, few had jobs as well paying as Bellona's. No matter how much her family connection may have helped her, she herself must have both vigorously pursued the job and shown herself worthy of holding it.[11]

We don't know what Bellona looked like, but this Dutch painting probably gives a reasonably good idea of her clothing and the work she performed.

{Washerwoman by Gabriel Metsu, ca. 1660s; source: wikipedia (National Museum, Warsaw)}

In Bellona's time one laundered table linen by boiling and washing with soap. The laundresses used lye to remove stains and sunlight or bluing to whiten. They hung or spread linens to dry and then used either "smoothers" or heated irons to flatten the fabric and give it a pleasant sheen. Once smoothed, the linens would be placed in a press such as the one shown below. The press would impart attractive folds.

{This press is in collections of the Wawel Royal Castle, Cracow.}

Not an ordinary meal, this shows the coronation banquet for James II, the successor of Charles II. You can see the folds in the linen at table ends.

{source: The history of the coronation of James II and of his royal consort Queen Mary: solemnized in the Collegiate church of St. Peter in the city of Westminster, on Thursday the 23 of April 1685 by Francis Sandford (London: In the Savoy: printed by T. Newcomb, 1687)}

This enlarged detail shows the folds more plainly.

Here are, at left, a glass English linen smoother and, at right, a detail from a medieval painting showing linen folds in a more ordinary meal at the king's table.[12]

{The right hand image is a detail from a medieval painting (Histoire d'Olivier de Castille et d'Artus d'Algarbe, Paris, BnF). I couldn't find an example from Bellona's time. Source of both images: oldandinteresting.com}

These two images also give a general idea of Bellona's appearance. The first shows an English housewife in the time of Bellona's childhood and the second shows a Dutch servant of the time when she'd become an adult. She may have looked something like the first when she dressed at her best and something like the second when at work.

{On the left: Drawing of an Englishwoman by Wenceslaus Hollar, circa 1645; source: English Costume Painted & Described by Dion Clayton Calthrop (Adam & Charles, London, 1907). On the right: Detail from A Woman Reading a Letter by Gabriel Metsu, ca. 1662 (Dutch); source: Nicole Kipar's Late 17th Century Clothing History}

Of the clothes worn by working women in the reign of Charles II, one source says: "The poorer classes were not, of course, dressed in hooped skirts, but the bodice and gown over the petticoat, the apron, and the turned back cuff to the short sleeve were worn by all. The orange wench laced her gown neatly, and wore a white cloth tied over her head; about her shoulders she wore a kerchief of white, and often a plain frill of linen at her elbows."

--------

Some sources:

An introduction to merchants accounts : containing five distinct questions or accounts by John Collins (London, Printed by James Flesher for Nicholas Bourn, 1653, 2d ed 1664)

Report on the manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Great Britain. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (Printed for H. M. Stationary off., by Mackie & co. ld., 1900) and the MSS original from Beaulieu

The Personal Rule of Charles I by Kevin Sharpe (Yale University Press, 1996)

The Later Stuart Royal Household 1660–1714 in 'Chronological Survey 1660-1837: The Later Stuart Household, 1660-1714', Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 11 (revised): Court Officers, 1660-1837 (2006), pp. LXXVI-XCVIII. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43757 Date accessed: 09 December 2011

'Introduction: Administrative structure and work', Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 11 (revised): Court Officers, 1660-1837 (2006), pp. XX-XXXVII. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43751 Date accessed: 09 December 2011.

The King's Servants: the Civil Service of Charles I, 1625–1642, by G.E. Aylmer (London, 1961)

The Database of Court Officers 1660-1837 R. O. Bucholz, Project Director. The Database of Court Officers is an online computer database providing the career histories of every remunerated officer and servant of the English royal household from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.

Calendar of state papers / Domestic series / Reign of Charles II, 1661-1662 ed. by Mary Anne Everett Green (Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1861)

Some fruits of solitude by William Penn (London, Printed for Thomas Northcott, 1693, reprinted: S. T. Freemantle, 1900)

The Life and Times of John Wilkins Warden of Wadham College, Oxford; Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Bishop of Chester by P. A. Wright Henderson (William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London, 1910)

Calendar of State Papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II 1660-1685 (Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1861)

Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II: preserved in the state paper department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, Volume 1 (Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1860)

Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century: including letters of Barrow, Flamsteed, Wallis, and Newton, printed from the originals in the collection of the Right Honourable the Earl of Macclesfield, Vol. 1, compiled by Stephen Jordan Rigaud (Oxford, the University Press, 1841)

Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century, including letters of Barrow [&c.] in the collection of the earl of Macclesfield, Vol. 2, compiled by Stephen Jordan Rigaud (Oxford, the University Press, 1841)

Some fruits of solitude by William Penn (London, Printed for Thomas Northcott, 1693, reprinted: S. T. Freemantle, 1900)

English Costume Painted & Described by Dion Clayton Calthrop (Adam & Charles, London, 1907)

History of laundry on oldandinteresting.com

Prospects and preliminary work on female occupational structure in England from
1500 to the national census by Jacob Field and Amy Erickson (University of Cambridge). Extract: "The assessments for the 1666 Hearth Tax for the City of London, abstracted by Jacob Field for his doctoral thesis on the Great Fire, illustrates this approach but also show its difficulties. This listing was drawn up by a number of different assessors, not all of whom recorded occupations. The total sample of householders was 11,195, 1,661 of whom were female. Around ten per cent of females had their occupation recorded, representing 177 individuals, compared to around 20 per cent of males, representing 1,888 individuals. As table 1 shows, the data is slightly skewed towards the upper end of the socio-economic spectrum – particularly vastly underestimating the proportion of females engaged in service." (See table p.6)

Identifying women's occupations in early modern London by Amy Erickson. Abstract: "This paper is a preliminary survey of three sources for women's occupations in eighteenth-century London: apprenticeships in the city livery companies; the registers of Christ's Hospital showing apprenticeships; and the records of testimony in the Old Bailey. There is currently only one article in print on the female occupational geography of London in this period (P. Earle, 1989), based on testimony in church court records. In the sources examined here, women worked largely in public, trading and production occupations. This profile is substantially different from the preponderance of domestic service and making/mending textiles which appears in the church court records."

"Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England by Amy M Froide; review by: Retha M Warnicke" Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Summer 2006), pp. 622-623 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America; Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1353/ren.2008.0342
Froide says that about a third of English women were single during the middle years of the seventeenth century. Many stayed unmarried, but most eventually, like Bellona Austin, did marry. Social norms made it difficult for them to support themselves, but many did nonetheless. Excerpt: "singlewomen, like all women at this time, were considered physically and emotionally inferior to men in a patriarchal society that disadvantaged them in comparison to men of their class or status, especially in regard to wealth, earning power and access to high status public office."

"Singlewomen in the European past, 1250-1800 by Judith Bennett; Amy Froide; review by June Purvis" The English Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 461 (Apr., 2000), pp. 443-444Published by: Oxford University Press; Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/579115

"Hilda L. Smith. All Men and Both Sexes: Gender, Politics, and the False Universal in England, 1640-1832, review by: Deborah Valenze" The American Historical Review, Vol. 109, No. 1 (February 2004), pp. 251-252 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical Association; Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/530280

Catherine of Braganza (Queen) in the Diary of Samuel Pepys

Catherine of Braganza

Catherine of Braganca (1638 - 1705) on h2g2 by Not Panicking Ltd

Catherine of Braganza, in Wikipedia

Queen Catherine of Braganza Website of the Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment

C17th England: Catherine of Braganza on themakeupgallery

Portrait of Catherine of Braganza by Mary Ellyn Kunz on the web site of Pennsbury Manor Volunteers

Catherine of Braganza on Tea at Trianon by Elena Maria Vidal.

Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705) by Heidi Murphy on Britannia.com

Catherine of Braganza by Thomas Frederick Tout in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 09
Catherine of Braganza

Early modern England 1485-1714 by R. O. Bucholz and Newton Key (John Wiley and Sons, 2009)

---------

Notes:

[1] The priest was Thomas Baker who held the living at Bishop's Nympton, Devon, and, as an avocation of course, was an excellent mathematician. On May 23 1677 Collins wrote him this. "I have yours of the 23d of April, and have been dilatory in answering. The truth of it is, it hath been my misfortune to be concerned in public employments, as in the Council of Plantations, &c., wherein I have not been paid, and have great arrears due to me, for want whereof I am almost ruined; and having a numerous family to maintain, to wit, a wife, and seven small children, I am forced to undertake such occasional business as offers, and by consequence to neglect a correspondence with the learned, which, though unworthy, I much covet. Sir Jonas Moore being a surveyor of the Stores and Ordnance, and now naval preparations going on, he is much in journeys and absent, so that I can give you no account as yet of your labours going to the press, though I much wish I could, and shall omit no endeavours to hasten." -- Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century: including letters of Barrow, Flamsteed, Wallis, and Newton, printed from the originals in the collection of the right honourable the Earl of Macclesfield : In two volumes, Volume 2 compiled by Stephen Jordan Rigaud (Oxford, at the University Press, 1841)

[2] Christoph J. Scriba's article on Collins in the DNB says "About 1670 he married Bellona, laundress of the table linen to the queen, and the younger daughter of William Austen, head cook to Charles II; they had seven children." It's strange he gets the wedding date wrong, though all else right. Regarding second self, here is what the OED says:

second self n. a friend who agrees absolutely with one's tastes and opinions, or for whose welfare one cares as much as for one's own.
1586 T. Bowes tr. P. de la Primaudaye French Acad. I. 150 The mightie and inuiolable bond of friendship, as of a second-selfe did constraine him to lend his eare to his friend.
1665 R. Brathwait Comment Two Tales Chaucer (1901) 93, I will offer to your choice two things, wherein please your self, and you shall please me who am your second self.
1778 F. Burney Evelina I. xxvi. 215 As to Miss Mirvan, she is my second self, and neither hopes nor fears but as I do.
1851 E. Bulwer-Lytton Not so Bad i. i. 6 Ha, Softhead! my Pylades—my second self!
transf.
1609 Shakespeare Sonnets lxxiii. sig. E4, Blacke night..Deaths second selfe that seals vp all in rest.

Penn's admonition comes from Some fruits of solitude by William Penn (London, Printed for Thomas Northcott, 1693, reprinted: S. T. Freemantle, 1900). Here is the closing sentence of the letter to Collins by his mathematical practitioner friend, in full:

Not to trouble you further, but my respects to yourself and Mrs. Collins, your second self, I shall only tell you, that if there be any thing wherein I may serve you at Bristol, it shall be endeavoured by
Your engaged friend, Mich. Dary

Bristol, the 23rd
April, 1663.
-- Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century compiled by Correspondence of scientific men of the seventeenth century (Oxford, the University Press, 1841)

[3] Regarding his status as someone "middling" Collins wrote of himself that he was "but a mean person," mean and middling connoting the same standard of living. Regarding money owed him, he was not alone in being stiffed by the government. The court always paid out more than it took in, but periodically the imbalance became so great that economies were necessary and it was these bouts of financial retrenchment that made government employment perilous. Collins did eventually receive some payments that the government owed him but not nearly what was owed. The phrase "but a mean person" appears in: "Narrative of John Collins, 1682," Report on the manuscripts of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Great Britain. Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (Printed for H. M. Stationary off., by Mackie & co. ld., 1900)

[4] William Austin's association with John Wilkins is an interesting one. I suspect they were linked by friendship with John Marr. Wilkins was a scholar at Oxford. Marr was clerk, that is accountant and purchasing officer, in the same royal kitchen where Austin was chief chef. Wilkins and Marr were both eminent mathematicians and, when the royal court was in Oxford they very likely formed an acquaintance. When the position of chef at Wadham College became vacant, it's reasonable to suppose Marr proposed that Wilkens, then head of Wadham, hire the man for the job. It's interesting that Marr had employed Collins as "servant's servant," in this case clerk's assistant, because, though still in his teens, Collins may have met both Bellona Austin as well as John Wilkins at this time. He later wrote: "In my Youth-hood I was employed in Clerk-ship under, and received some Mathematical Knowledge from Mr. John Marr, one of the Clerks of the Kitchin to His Present MAJESTY, when Prince of Wales, the said Mr. Marr being very Eminent for his Mathematical Knowledge, some testimony whereof' may be evinced, from those excellent Dyals, wherewith the Gardens of our Late SOVEREIGN were adorned." -- An introduction to merchants accounts: containing five distinct questions or accounts by John Collins (London, Printed by James Flesher for Nicholas Bourn, 1653, 2d ed 1664)

[5] 'The household below stairs: Household Kitchen', Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 11 (revised): Court Officers, 1660-1837 (2006), pp. 502-509. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43871 Date accessed: 25 November 2011.

[6] Here's a record of William Austin's appointment as master cook to King Charles II. The date of appointment is only a few weeks after Charles' return from exile.

{source: The Database of Court Officers 1660-1837 R. O. Bucholz, Project Director, an online computer database providing the career histories of every remunerated officer and servant of the English royal household from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837}

This table gives some idea of the extent and varied functions of the ca. 300 staff members "below stairs":

{source: The King's Servants: the Civil Service of Charles I, 1625–1642, by G.E. Aylmer (London, 1961)}

[7] See my list of sources for information about Catherine of Braganza, the royal laundry, and related topics. Bucholz provides a succinct description of the laundry's functions: The Database of Court Officers 1660-1837 R. O. Bucholz, Project Director, an online computer database providing the career histories of every remunerated officer and servant of the English royal household from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837

[8] See the Bucholz database for amounts paid laundry staff members.

[9] Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II: preserved in the state paper department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, Volume 1 (Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1860)

[10] Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reign of Charles II: preserved in the state paper department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, Volume 1 (Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1860)

[11] On single women in the workforce, see entries for Amy Ericson and Amy Froide in the sources list.

[12] Here is this interesting painting in full.

The BnF's caption reads: "Festin d'apparat. Histoire d'Olivier de Castille et d'Artus d'Algarbe, Paris, BnF, Département des manuscrits, Français 12574 fol. 181v. La table d'honneur est isolée sous un dais, tandis que le gros des convives se répartit le long d'une table, dont ils n'occupent qu'un côté. Le ballet des serviteurs est mené par le maître d'hôtel, tandis qu'au buffet et près du prince veillent d'autres officiers de bouche, prêts à répondre à ses moindres désirs. Des musicicens égayent le repas."

a fire on Reade Street

2011-11-17T19:37:00.006-05:00

From time to time I've written about the many occupations of my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller.[1] During his long life he helped found and manage a surprising number of business ventures — fire insurance, title insurance, banks, and land companies. Despite all this activity (and somewhat more[2]) he never abandoned his first enterprise as a "commission merchant" in an office called Louis Windmuller & Roelker at 20 Reade St. in Manhattan.[3]

Here you see the firm name and a signature on a back check he signed while the business was still young.

{source: stampwants}

The other day a reader left an interesting comment on a post I'd written a year ago about the commission merchant business. Using the handle "codepic," this person wrote:

Hi, I bumped into your blog post because I'm trying to track where my antique trunk is made. I found a parts catalog in here http://www.thisoldtrunk.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7&products_id=112 from which I found the crystallized tin being described and I guess it's the same type of tin my trunk is made of. Interestingly the parts catalog dates to 1889 and has the address "20 Reade Street, New York". Have you seen any reference to Campfield or Wood family during your research?

The short answer to the question is "no" I do not know of any links between my great-grandfather's commission agent business and the firm of Campfield & Wood. Intrigued by the question I've done some online searching and come up with some interesting finds.

Campfield & Wood was in the business of supplying parts to manufacturers of trunks. Alexander Campfield held a patent for a zinc plating process used in the 1870s on metal trunk coverings like the one you see here with its interesting stamped pattern.

{Small trunk (27 x 14 x 12 in.) having a tin cover over pine wood. The tin is zinc plated by a patterned processing that was (probably) the one patented by Alexander Campfield in 1876; source: Collectors Weekly}

Here are the cover and a couple of pages from the source which codepic cites.

{1889 Campfield and Wood Trunk Parts Catalog, 29 pp, containing illustrations and descriptions of trunk locks, rollers, catches, handles, clamps, stamped metal, etc. Includes tools, trunk tacks, wood, and lining paper.}

Campfield & Wood show up in city directories of the 1870s, including these three.

{Wilson's New York City Copartnership Directory (The Trow City Directory Company, 1879)}

{Gouldings New York city directory (Lawrence G. Goulding., 1877)}

{This entry in a copartnership directory of 1874 shows a couple of silent partners who had lent money to the business; Wilson's New York City Copartnership Directory, John F. Trow, Publisher, H. Wilson, Compiler (Trow City Directory Co., 1874)}

It's interesting that in the 1830s there was a firm called Campfield & Wood & Co., carriage-makers, located not far from 20 Reade St.

{Longworth's American almanac: New-York register and city directory (T. Longworth, 1837)}

I'm sure there's more to be learned about Campfield & Wood, and I'm also sure that that firm and my great-grandfather's occupied offices at 20 Reade St. by coincidence and not from any connection between the two. Apart from street address there's nothing I can find that associates the one with the other.

New York City directories list the two businesses and many of their neighbors, both in the building at 20 Reade Street and in the buildings on either side of them.

The other businesses in their building include a supplier of wrapping paper, a merchant, an individual, one E. B. Higgins, who did not choose to have his occupation listed, and these three:

{source: Trow's Directory, 1872}

Next door at 18 Reade you can find a representative of the San Francisco firm of Murphy, Grant, & Co., the "largest and oldest wholesale dry-goods house on the Pacific Coast."[4] This is an 1896 trade card of Murphy, Grant, & Co. showing that they made the best overalls in the world.

{source: Harmer-Schau Auction Galleries}

Two doors to the east, at 16 Reade, were a manufacturer of pool tables[5] and two agents for the Thomas Manufacturing Co., which made mowers, rakes, and "tillage implements" in Springfield, Ohio. This is an ad for one of the Thomas Mfg. Co.'s seed drilling machines.[6]

{source (as you can see): an eBay auction}

A photoengraver, the National Photo-Engraving Co., occupied space in both 16 and 18 Reade. The firm's specialty was in printing stationery and books rather than the usual reproductions of drawings and paintings. Here is one of their ads, along with a (low-quality) reproduction of the work sample that the ad cites.

{source: The international annual of Anthony's photographic bulletin and American process year-book (E. & H.T. Anthony & Co., 1898)}

On the west side of 20 Reade the occupants were just as various. At 22-26 Reade were a print shop belonging to William P. Atkin, a bookbinder named Louis Gilbert, a purveyor of paper[7], a perfume manufacturer, and manufacturers of water meters and hydraulic power implements. In addition, the Dutch Reformed Church in America had its "Domestic Offices" and a shop at 26 Reade Street. R. Brinkerhoff, the Business Agent, was member of a family which had made its home at that address since the 18th century.[9]

The perfume manufacturer was Theodore Ricksecker who is credited as the first American perfumier.[8] This souvenir comes from the 1884 World Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans.

{source: eBay auction}

The water meter and hydraulic power vendors were the same business.[10]

{sources: Factory and industrial management , Volume 21 (McGraw-Hill publishing company, Inc., 1901) and Technique: published annually by the junior class of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 1897)}

Also at 26 Reade Street was the Baldwin & Gleason Co., makers of celluloid pins and buttons.

There's a lot to be learned about 20 Reade and its neighbors from accounts of a fire that consumed the building next door. The Times gave the event extensive coverage, as you can read here: PERFUME-LADEN SMOKE CHOKES FIRE FIGHTERS; Five Also Badly Hurt at Fierce Blaze on Reade Street. Exploding Celluloid Spreads the Flames Which Burn Out a Five-Story Building and Damage Adjacent Property (New York Times, December 23, 1901). You can read the story here. The City's own fire report is more succinct. It says that on December 22, 1901, a fire destroyed the six-story brick building at 22-26 Reade Street. The fire stared in the sub-basement and extended upwards to the top floor by means of vertical belt shafts (used for powering manufacturing equipment) and the building's elevator shaft.[11] The Times' reporter wrote that the fire caused explosions when it reached the Baldwin & Gleason workshop. "These sounded like the bursting of big firecrackers, but were not of sufficient force to endanger the firemen and others inside the danger lines." The report also says that when the fire reached the Ricksecker establishment on the top two floors, "the odor of perfumes cold be discerned all the way down the block, and the firemen said afterward that ordinary smoke was nothing by comparison to that laden with the sickening smell of musk or even of high-priced colognes."

The Times man found that a man had been working in the sub-cellar early the same morning as the fire and it was presumed he had inadvertently left behind a cigarette stub or burning match behind.

As the fire progressed, he said, "the scene in the alley [behind the building] was probably the most remarkable of the whole fire. This alley is only 25 feet wide. From the fire escapes of buildings on one side it almost possible to reach to those on the other. Firemen swarmed up the escapes, but by the time they reached their positions of vantage the smoke was so dense that they could not be seen a few yards away. To an onlooker at the lower end of the alley it appeared as though they must all be suffocated, but they were not, and relatively few had to stop their work. In a saloon at the corner of the alley and Elm Street the celebrated belt given to John L. Sullivan by popular subscription when he was champion prizefighter of the world was on exhibition. The owners of the place heard of the fire and rushed down town to get out the treasure, which contains 365 diamonds and 15½ pounds of gold."

The Times reporter assures his readers that "the well-known landmark called Cobweb Hall, which has been standing since the memory of the oldest inhabitants began,... was not hurt except by having its walls and interior saturated with the thick smoke." Chances are, the smoke added to the ambience of this hangout. Another Times article described the place: "Rusty silverware, ceilings dusty with cobwebs, bar furniture, tables, and chairs of remote date, old prints on the walls, and Pattullo's name [that of the founder] in silver letters, on the front windows of the hostelry." (NYT, November 16, 1902)[12]

This detail from a panoramic map of Manhattan, made about 1900 shows the block where 20 Reade Street could be found. The building at 22-26 is shown out of scale (much narrower than it actually was). I've marked it in red. In addition I've identified the building at 20 Reade and also put white circles around the locations of "Cobweb Hall" and the saloon where the extravagant John L. Sullivan belt was being displayed.

{Bird's-eye-view of Manhattan and adjacent districts, New York City, New York, ca. 1900, Not drawn to scale; source: Library of Congress}

This detail from a fire insurance map of 1897 shows the block where the fire took place. I've outlined 22-26 Reade in blue and shown the rough locations of the saloon and "Cobweb Hall."

{Insurance maps of the City of New York. Borough of Manhattan. Volume 3. Published by Sanborn Map Co., 11 Broadway, New York. 1904. Source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

------

Some sources:

Collectors Weekly, Small Herringbone tin Trunk with Wood Handles. "Herringbone style tin in great shape. Measures 27" long, 14" wide 12" deep. Pine under the metal. Wooden runners on the bottom are offset, appears to be hand made."

Bird's-eye-view of Manhattan and adjacent districts, New York City, New York, ca. 1900, Not drawn to scale; source: Library of Congress

The Bay of San Francisco, the metropolis of the Pacific Coast and its suburban cities, a history (Lewis Publishing Co., 1892)

Index of wills, inventories, etc. in the office of the Secretary of State prior to 1901 (New Jersey. Dept. of State, 1912)

PERFUME-LADEN SMOKE CHOKES FIRE FIGHTERS; Five Also Badly Hurt at Fierce Blaze on Reade Street. Exploding Celluloid Spreads the Flames Which Burn Out a Five-Story Building and Damage Adjacent Property. New York Times, December 23, 1901. Extract: "Reade Street was the scene of all the excitement that the intricate machinery of the New York Fire Department can arouse at a dangerous conflagration yesterday afternoon. The building at 22, 24, and 26 was completely gutted from its sub-cellar to its roof. Chief Edward F. Croker estimated the losses to be at least $75,000, and the police said that the damage would not be far short of $100,000."

Report of the Fire Department of the City of New York (1902)

Safety Maintenance & Production , Volume 11 Insurance Engineering, Record for the Year 1905 (January 1906)

The Southeastern reporter, Volume 19 (West Pub. Co., 1894)

Index of wills, inventories, etc. in the office of the Secretary of State prior to 1901 (New Jersey. Dept. of State, 1912)

Home furnishing review, Volume 12 (Andrew J. Haire, 1897)

American printer and lithographer (Moore Publishing Co., 1895)

Annual report of the Commissioner of Labor, Issue 11, Part 1 (State Dept. of Labor, 1913)

The International harvester co (United States. Bureau of Corporations, Govt. Print. Off., 1913)

The Pharmaceutical era (New York, D. O. Haynes & Co., 1877)

The Sun. (New York, November 12, 1908)

The book of New York; forty years' recollections of the American metropolis (The Book of New York company, 1912)

The Mission field, Volume 1 (Boards of the Reformed Church in America, 1888)

Bragaws, my blog post dated November 20, 2010

The family of Joris Dircksen Brinckerhoff, 1638 compiled by Richard Brinkerhoff (New York, R. Brinkerhoff, 1887)

Pressure Lamps International

Ricksecker's Perfumes

Report of the Fire Department of the City of New York (1902)

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1996607

The Trow City Directory Co.'s, formerly Wilson's, copartnership and corporation directory of New York City (Trow, 1874)

The Trow City Directory Co.'s, formerly Wilson's, copartnership and corporation directory of New York City (Trow, 1879)

Gouldings New York city directory (Lawrence G. Goulding., 1877)

The Trow (formerly Wilson's) copartnership and corporation directory of New York City (Trow, 1901)

The Trow (formerly Wilson's) copartnership and corporation directory of New York City (Trow, 1909)

1897/98 LAIN'S DIRECTORY Brooklyn

Wilson's New York City Copartnership Directory, John F. Trow, Publisher, H. Wilson, Compiler (Trow City Directory Co., 1874)

Gouldings New York city directory (Lawrence G. Goulding., 1877)

Wilson's New York City Copartnership Directory (The Trow City Directory Company, 1879)

Longworth's American almanac: New-York register and city directory (T. Longworth, 1837)

------

Notes:

[1] For my posts on the man click the "Louis Windmuller" link in the panel at right. Here are links to the LW&R ones:

flourishing, December 22, 2010
commission merchant, November 06, 2010
Madagascar No. 21, November 07, 2010
an office on Reade Street, June 05, 2010

[2] His obituary in the Evening Post gave a pretty full run down of his many activities. You can read it here: Louis Windmuller Dead, New York Evening Post, October 20, 1913.

[3] He helped found and manage the Title Guarantee and Trust Company, the German-American insurance Company, the Hide and Leather National Bank, the German Alliance insurance Co., the Maiden Lane Safe Deposit Co. and Maiden Lane Savings Bank, the Bond and Mortgage Guarantee Company, the South Manhattan Realty Co., and the Newtown Savings Bank. Two years before his death Who's who in Finance, Banking, and Insurance (N.Y. 1911) gave the tersest possible summary of his public life:

Windmuller, Louis

Merchant, banker; born Münster, Westphalia, Germany, 1835; educated Gymnasium Carollnum, Münster; came to the United States, 1863; since then resident of New York City; married, New York City, Nov. 23, 1859, Annie Eliza Lefman.

Successfully engaged in business in New York City as a merchant; senior member of the firm of Louis Windmuller & Roelker of New-York and Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany; president Maiden Lane Savings Bank; first vice-president and director Maiden Lane Safe Deposit Co.; director and one of the founders German- American Insurance Co., Title Guarantee and Trust Co., German Alliance Insurance Co., South Manhattan Realty Co.

Independent; supported Cleveland on tariff issue, and in campaign of 1892, with Carl Schurz and others, formed the German-American Cleveland Union, contributing effectually to the Cleveland success of that year. Supported McKinley on financial issue, 1896; chairman German American Hughes Alliance, aiding in election of Governor Hughes 1908.

Member New York Chamber of Commerce, New York Board of Trade and Transportation (managing director); treasurer Legal Aid Society, giving gratuitously legal aid to helpless strangers. Life member New York Historical Society; member Germanistic Society, Germanic Museum Ass'n of Cambridge, Mass, (vice-president); vice-president Heine Monument Ass'n, Arion Society.

Recreations: Long walks; art and book collector.

Clubs: Merchants', Lotos, Press, Underwriters, New York Athletic, National Arts, Reform (treasurer since 1889).

Contributor on Economic, civic, and financial questions to North American Review, The Forum. Outlook, New York Times, New York Evening Post, New Yorker Staats Zeitung. Meyer's Konversations. Lexicon, the Berlin Nation and other periodicals.

Residence: Woodside, Queens Borough. Office: 20 Reade St., N. Y. City.

[4] This shows the Murphy, Grant, & Co. building in the 1870s.

{From a panorama engraving showing San Francisco by Frederick Hess, 1875}

For more on Murphy, Grant, & Co. see The Bay of San Francisco, the metropolis of the Pacific Coast and its suburban cities, a history (Lewis Publishing Co., 1892)

[5] Wallie Dorr, pool tables. "The sole manufacturer of the Doré [pool] tables is Wallie Dorr, 16 and 18 Reade street, New York, who is also the manufacturer of the novel and fascinating parlor game Loo-Wese, which in a brief period has become one of the best sellers and leaders in the higher class of toy lines." -- Home furnishing review, Volume 12 (Andrew J. Haire, 1897). See also: Wallie Dorr Co., 16-18 Reade st. (George S. Van DeWater, partner) -- Annual report of the Commissioner of Labor, Issue 11, Part 1 (State Dept. of Labor, 1913)

[6] The Thomas Manufacturing Co. also made razors like this one.

{Source: Thomas Mfg Co Dayton Ohio}

And early in the 20th century became known for its "pressure lamps" like this "kerosafe" model.

{source: Pressure Lamps International}

[7] The Vernon Paper Company were general paper dealers specializing in wrapping papers. See Lockwood's directory of the paper and allied trades, Volume 31 (Vance Pub. Corp., 1905) and Printing trades blue book (A.F. Lewis & Co., 1918) " Wrapping Papers, Vernon, Paul E., &Co. 22-24-26 Reade; tel. Worth 4725"

[8] Here's an ad for Ricksecker perfumes.

{source: vintagefeedsacks.blogspot}

"He is credited to have been the first American to establish a perfumery company, launching his first fragrance in 1868. Over the decades, he became renowned for his rich spice and floral fragrances in perfumes and colognes. His use of pottery and glass, in a variety of shapes, colors, techniques, and sizes were part of the appeal -- then, as is now for collectors." -- Ricksecker's Perfumes

[9] Some of the Brinkerhoff family were neighbors of the Louis Windmuller family in Woodside, Queens. George Brinckerhoff owned a farm a few hundred yards south of the Windmuller land as shown in this property map. George Brinckerhoff was connected to Louis Windmuller's wife, Annie, via Magretia Brinckerhoff who married Theodorus Van Wyck in 1693. Their daughter, Altje Van Wyck married Richard Thorne from whom Annie was directly descended. -- Bragaws on my blog, November 20, 2010.

[10] "The Standard Water Meter Company, successors to the Tuerk Hydraulic Power Company, manufacturers of Water Meters and Motors, are now situated at 22 to 26 Reade street, New York City. Their former place of business was 23 Vandewater street, and It is at the latter address that the factory Is yet situated. The Standard Disk Meter which they are putting upon the market has been approved by the Municipal Water Works Commissioner. It has the very latest improvements, and for accuracy and fine mechanical work they claim it cannot be excelled." -- Sanitary and heating age (Sanitary and Heating Publishing, 1901)

[11] Report of the Fire Department of the City of New York (1902)

[12] Cobweb Hall was popular among actors, professional people, sporting men, and politicians. "Mayor Grant and Mayor Gilroy used to drop in there frequently to discuss city affairs with the other celebrities who frequented the place" and its' second owner himself served as a city alderman at one time (New York Sun, February 18, 1919). A contemporary account says Cobweb Hall was

an aged and dust-encrusted structure, hedged in by the massive growths of a recent day. On a gray November afternoon, when snow threatens, let us enter the "snug," which is reached by a passage in front of an unembellished bar; the absence of all pretension is its charm; and if the tumblers of hot whisky-toddies which subdue the chill in the air with their aroma, are vicious on so cold a day, then here, at least, the vice is in its naked ugliness, without a speck of tinsel to gild it. Cobwebs are stretched across the walls and the ceiling; gauzy seas of them have veiled every object — the pyramids of ale-casks, and the demijohns at the bars. From every corner and crevice the eye meets them depending by their silken threads; but, notwithstanding their plenitude, it would appear less sacrilegious to the custodian to rob an altar of its plate than to destroy one of the finely-spun nets that have given his establishment its name. No one comes here or should come seeking luxury, for it does not exist. The tables and chairs are of plain deal, without cloths or cushions; albeit, they are as strong as the steaming Lochinvar and Dublin punches, that are served to you in glasses, not such as you have been used to, but plenary crystals that hold a generous half-pint. ... Genial sobriety is the rule at "Cobweb Hall," however. Men come through its dingy portals, and while away whole afternoons in sipping the hot toddies, and recalling the past with old friends and acquaintances. The atmosphere itself has an effect in giving the mind a retrospective turn, and in its yellow haze evolve the teeming figures of old times which have seemed almost lost to memory. -- "English Haunts in New York," Appletons journal , Volume 10 (D. Appleton and Co., 1873)

A Veterans' Day remembrance: July 1-3, 1863/1913

2011-11-11T09:57:00.007-05:00

This photo shows two survivors of the Battle of Gettysburg. They're attending a massive reunion to commemorate the event, held on the 50th anniversary, July 1-3, 1913.

{Caption: GETTYSBURG REUNION: G.A.R. & U.C.V. (Grand Army of the Republic, United Confederate Veterans); source: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division}

{Veterans Enrolling Their Names, Commands, and Camps and Home Addresses in One of the Thirty Register Books Located Throughout the Camp; source: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg}

{GETTYSBURG REUNION: VETERANS OF THE G.A.R. AND OF THE CONFEDERACY, AT THE ENCAMPMENT; source: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division}

{Old Time Martial Music For Their Departing Comrades; source: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg}

This looks like it shows a reporter preparing a dispatch from the field.

{GETTYSBURG REUNION: G.A.R. & U.C.V.; source: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division}

There's no information about this photo. I like how, being the same age, the men seem to represent a broad cross section of society — urban & rural, well-dressed & shirt-sleeved, well-preserved & bent with age.

{GETTYSBURG REUNION: G.A.R. & U.C.V.; source: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division}

This shows Lindley Miller Garrison, the Secretary of War, with Hunter Liggett, then head of the Army War College.

{GETTYSBURG REUNION: G.A.R. & U.C.V. SEC. GARRISON AND COL. LIGGETT, U.S.A.; source: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division}

Local Boy Scouts served as escorts, aides, and orderlies.

{Boy Scouts - Gettysburg. Photo shows Boy Scouts at the Gettysburg Reunion (the Great Reunion) of July 1913, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Source: Flickr Commons project, 2009}

{Helping Their Own Comrade -- "To Rise in the World." (Sometimes Practiced in '61-'65.); source: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg}

This photo shows a ceremonial hand shake near the Bloody Angle, which was the culmination of Pickett's Charge.[1]

{Comrades; source: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg}

The Reunion at Bloody Angle[2]

{The reunion at "Bloody Angle" - Pickett's men in for[e]ground; Union men lined against wall. Photo shows the Gettysburg Reunion (the Great Reunion) of July 1913, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Source: Flickr Commons project, 2009}

Pickett's Charge

{"Pickett's Charge of July 3, 1913; source: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg}

The stone wall at the Bloody Angle.

{The Blue and Gray Side-by-Side on the "Stone Wall"; source: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg}

Authentic reënacters of 1913.

{Two Survivors in the Identical Uniforms of Blue and Gray They Wore There in the Battle of July 3rd, 1863; source: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg }

Pickett's Men at Bloody Angle

{Pickett's men at Bloody Angle. Photo shows the Gettysburg Reunion (the Great Reunion) of July 1913, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Source: Flickr Commons project, 2009 }

Detail:

Union Men at Bloody Angle

{12th Pa. Volunteers at Bloody Angle. Photo shows the 12th Pennsylvania Volunteers at the Gettysburg Reunion (the Great Reunion) of July 1913, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Source: Flickr Commons project, 2009}

Detail:

Here's an eye-witness account:

It is fitting that the side of the private soldiers who fought in the ranks on those three bloody days of July, 1963, should be heard. Below is the narrative of Simon Hubler, a soldier in the 143d Pennsylvania Infantry, who was in the great battle from start to finish. ...
WE were lying at White Oak Church, south of Falmouth, Va., when we received orders to march. We did not know where we were going, but our course took us to Bealton Station, thence along the Orange Alexandria Railroad in a northerly direction, and presently we arrived at Berlin's Ford, near Harper's Ferry', where we crossed the Potomac River about June 27 and proceeded to Middletown, Md. We arrived at this place Sunday. ... During the night of [July] second I heard some one cry for water out in front of our position. The boys told me I'd get plugged, but I took risk and proceeded with a canteen of water out in front of the line in the direction of the cry. Presently I came across the object of my search and found him to be a Confederate soldier mortally wounded. I gave him all the water that I had in my canteen. He asked me who I was, and I told him I belonged to the Pennysylvania Bucktail Brigade, whereupon he remarked, "Even though you are a Yank, you have a good heart in you." The next morning our skirmishers found him dead.

There was very little fighting and comparatively little excitement until about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. ... Suddenly a cannon roared over on our left, and then another boom sounded from the right. Immediately all the Confederate batteries in our front opened fire, and the famous cannonade of the third day's fight had begun. ... I was looking toward the lines of the enemy when I suddenly saw a line of the Confederates advance over a rise in the ground. I said: "Hello boys, here comes a charge!"

The Confederates came on as though on dress parade, directly toward our position. ... When they came within about 600 yards we directed two or three volleys of musketry into them, and almost at the same time they filed obliquely toward the left, and soon struck our lines to the right of our position.

The din was awful. We could see the fighting only indistinctly, because of obstructions in the way and because of the powder smoke. We soon saw small bodies of Confederate retreating, and then large masses which hurried back, broken and disorganized. ... Pickett's charge was over about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and during the remaining hours of daylight the firing was desultory. We maintained the position we had occupied during the day and slept on our arms during the night of July 3.
-- JUST THE PLAIN, UNVARNISHED STORY OF A SOLDIER IN THE RANKS; Exactly What a Corporal in the 143d Pennsylvania Infantry Did, Thought and Saw During the Three-Days' Battle, New York Times, June 29, 1913.

Gettysburg, July 3, 1863. This dramatic lithograph comes from a painting -- The Battle of Gettysburg: Pickett's Charge, by Peter Frederick Rothermel, 1869.

{From Rothermel's Great Painting for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the Museum at the Capitol, Harrisburg; source: frontspiece in Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg}

You can view a photograph of the painting here.
----------------

Some sources:

GETTYSBURG ONE OF THE GREATEST BATTLES IN HISTORY; Sixteen Hundred Fell or Were Captured Every Hour of the Thirty That the Fight Lasted -- 153,000 Men Engaged, by Francis Trevelyan Miller, New York Times, June 29, 1913, Magazine Section. Extract: "MORE than 200,000 people, from all parts of the country, according to the estimates, are now on their way or are about to begin the journey to America's greatest battleground."

Editorial on the Gettysburg Reunion, New York Times, July 1, 1913. Extract: "Whether or not it was judicious, or even justifiable, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg by collecting on that tragic field great numbers of the men who took part in the dreadful and magnificent conflict -- that is a question to be answered affirmatively only if the results of their presence there are great enough to compensate for the swift thinning of the veteran ranks that is sure to follow."

JUST THE PLAIN, UNVARNISHED STORY OF A SOLDIER IN THE RANKS; Exactly What a Corporal in the 143d Pennsylvania Infantry Did, Thought and Saw During the Three-Days' Battle, New York Times, June 29, 1913.

Memoirs of Gettysburg Simon Hubler, 1st Sgt., 143rd PA Vol. Inf., Co. I

Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, report of the Pennsylvania Commission, presented to His Excellency, John K. Tener, Governor of Pennsylvania, for transmittal to the General Assembly (Harrisburg, Pa., Wm. Stanley Ray, State Printer, 1914)

Gettysburg Reunion (the Great Reunion) of 1913 By: Callie Oettinger Date: June 30 , 2011

Yesterdays Heroes Reunite during The 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg

Rare Motion Pictures Show Civil War Veterans at the 75th Gettysburg Battle Anniversary Reunion, National Parks Traveler site

The Great Gettysburg Reunion of 1913

1913 Gettysburg reunion in wikipedia

Grand Army of the Republic in wikipedia

United Confederate Veterans in wikipedia

List of G.A.R. Grand Army of the Republic and U.C.V. United Confederate Veterans links

Dr. Simon HUBLER, 1913

BIO: Simon HUBLER, Centre County, PA

---------

Notes:

[1] Quoting Wikipedia: "Pickett's Charge was an infantry assault ordered by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee against Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's Union positions on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863, the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Its futility was predicted by the charge's commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, and it was arguably an avoidable mistake from which the Southern war effort never fully recovered psychologically. The farthest point reached by the attack has been referred to as the high-water mark of the Confederacy."

[2] Bloody Angle -- "The ceremonies incident to the hand-shake over the Stone Wall at "Bloody Angle" on the afternoon of July 3rd, in which one hundred and eighty survivors of the Philadelphia Brigade Association (Webb's Brigade), Comrade Thomas Thompson, Commanding, and John W. Frazier, Adjutant, and one hundred and twenty survivors of Pickett's Division Association, President, Major W. W. Bentley, Commanding, and Comrade Charles J. Loehr, Secretary, participated, were of intense interest. The two lines were formed one hundred feet apart, the Philadelphia Brigade on the North and Pickett's Division on the South side of the Stone Wall, over which they had fought with such desperate valor just fifty years ago to the hour — the former with their Division Battle Flag and the latter with their "Stars and Bars" they had carried over the wall behind their brigade commander, who fell between the guns of Cushing's Union battery, and besides the body of its youthful commander." -- Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, report of the Pennsylvania Commission, presented to His Excellency, John K. Tener, Governor of Pennsylvania, for transmittal to the General Assembly (Harrisburg, Pa., Wm. Stanley Ray, State Printer, 1914)

Sidonie Dittmarsch and family

2011-10-19T08:36:00.006-04:00

A distant relative of mine who's collaborated with me in sorting out some difficult genealogical questions recently came up with a nice find. My small stash of old family letters includes a condolence from a grandmother, four generations back, to a woman named Sidonie.[1] The distant relative, Alexandra Shand, discovered that the recipient of the condolence was Sidonie Dittmarsch, mother-in-law of my great-uncle, Adolph Windmuller.

Adolph's wife was, in Alexandra's words, "the fascinating Caroline (Lilly) Thurn Hague Windmuller." Caroline had a sister, Clara, and a brother, Theodore. Her parents were Sidonie Dittmarsch Thurn and Leopold Thurn.

New York's newspapers of the second half of the 19th century show a "Prof. Leopold Thurn" as teacher of drawing and painting on one occasion and of German on quite a few others.[2] They also show a Leopold Thurn making trans-Atlantic voyages, but whether this Leopold was Caroline's father I cannot say. The 1880 Census gives more satisfying information. It records Leopold Thurn as head of a household containing "Lidonis" his wife, his three children, and a servant. The occupation of both husband and wife is given as "Childrens Furnishing Goods."[3] By 1901 Leopold may have died, for in that year Sidonie is recorded as hosting the reception for Caroline's wedding to my great-uncle at her (Sidonie's) townhouse at 30 W. 36th St.[4] A year later Sidonie is recorded as leasing her townhouse to a tenant — none other than the famous Finley Peter Dunne.[5]

{New York Times, November 27, 1902}

I know nothing about Leopold Thurn's origins. Sidonie's father, Albert Ludwig Dittmarsch, was a merchant in Dresden, Germany. Her mother, Emilie Karoline Ranft, was the daughter of a Protestant pastor. Her brother, Emil Dittmarsch, was a the Philadelphia manager of a Milwaukee malt company.

Sidonie was 23 years old when she applied for permission to leave Dresden for the U.S. A quarter of a century later her name appears in diary of the piano manufacturer, William Steinway. He says he's had a New Year's call from her husband whom he refers to as "Mr. Thurn, husband of Sidonie Dittmarsch."[6] This phrasing suggests what I've suspected: that Sidonie had a somewhat larger impact on those around her than did Leopold.

By the time of Sidonie's death, in 1919, Caroline had become a successful and respected designer, maker, and seller of wedding gowns and other expensive women's clothing. The death notice says Sidonie was at a summer resort on the northern shore of the Long Island when her life came to an end.

{New York Herald, July 11, 1919}

In 1915 the Times had reported that Caroline had rented a summer place in the same location. There's no certainty that Caroline was in the same summer rental four years later, but it's entirely possible.
She rented this mansion or, possibly, another building on the estate.[7]

{Caption: Firwood, a Darien waterfront estate has 325 feet on L.I. Sound, a swimming pool, gardens and 4.84 acres in a one-acre zone. The estate remained in one family for 129 years. Inside Firwood, first built in 1860, and rebuilt and expanded 30 years later, are 14 bedrooms, nine baths and 13 elaborate antique fireplaces. Three living levels, with both walk-up attic and basement, the house features turrets, multiple chimneys and spectacular views. Source: Stamford Advocate, copied under fair use provisions of copyright law.}

Sidonie may or may not have put her husband in the shade; Caroline definitely put Adolph there. She had great talent, business acumen, and entrepreneurial ability while he was content to dally in finance and to drive about in her yellow Rolls Royce and other chauffeured vehicles.

After their marriage, he moved in with her (rather than their seeking a new home together or her moving into his place). A newspaper account some years after the wedding shows him to be living in 52 East 66th Street, a town house that her mother owned.[8] Here, via Google Street View, is what the building looks like today. Note that the lower part of No. 52 is obscured by a tree. (There's a view of the entryway here.)

View Larger Map
Caroline's sister, Clara, was married twice, first to a man named Patterson, then to George Anson Wilson.[9] Caroline likewise first married Ernest Hague, with whom she had two sons, and then married my great-uncle. I don't know whether, on re-marrying, either or both were widows or divorcées.

It's an oddity that men whose middle or last name is "de forest" recur in records and news accounts connected with Sidonie, Caroline, and the Windmullers. The 1880 Census records that Dewin Deforest, a 47-year-old salesman of dry goods, lived in the same building as the Thurns.[10] When Caroline and Adolph married in 1901, his best man was William De Forest Bostwick.[11] In 1903 the townhouse where Sidonie lived, 30 W. 36th Street, was leased first to Mrs. Nathaniel De Forest and then to Othniel De Forest.[12] Robert W. De Forest served with Louis Windmuller on civic committees and both were trustees of the Title Guarantee and Trust Co. (which Louis had helped to found).[13] Henry de Forest Baldwin served with Louis Windmuller as an officer of the Reform Club and he was one of the speakers at a ceremonial tribute to Windmuller given in the last year of his life.[14]

Finally, I should note that I have written before about my fascinating great-aunt:

-------------

Some sources:

I am indebted to communications from two descendants of my great-aunt Caroline as well as from Alexandra Shand for information contained in this blog post. See the sections on the Thurn-Dittmarsch family in my Windmuller genealogy for more on this subject.

Family Tree of Alexander R. Grässer and Birgit C. Karg for the Dittmarsch genealogy

Frauenwiki Dresden for Sidonie's travel to the U.S.

The William Steinway Diary, American History Museum, Smithsonian Institution

The Wine and spirit bulletin 1903, for Emil Dittmarsch

Long Neck Point, by Maggie Gordon for the Darien News, Feb. 1, 2010; about Collender's Point; points out that Andrew Carnegie spent summer vacations at the Brick House at roughly the same time Carolyn Hague was there.

John Alexander Joyce "John Alexander Joyce (1842-1915) Kentucky, Washington D.C., Missouri, Joyce, John Alexander, soldier, lawyer, poet, and biographer, b. Ireland, 1842; d. Washington, D.C. Jan. 1915."

Crimmins estate boasts vast waterfront

Firwood on the Sound Historical house on the market for $16.75 million on the Crimmins estate

Room for a Baker’s Dozen on the Crimmins estate

52 East 66th Street · Upper Eastside, NYC

Weddings of a Day, Dunne-Abbott, New York Times, December 10, 1902
--------------

Notes:

[1] Here's the text of the condolence.

New York, January 16, 1865

My Sidonie

Please receive this my first letter to you and I intend to continue my correspondence from time to time if you are pleased to answer my letters. If I did not write to you I have only my excuse to offer except a hesitation to be the first to communicate.

Your last letter caused us sorrow for the death of your good Father when I looked at his picture so fine looking and healthy -- I thought he might live many years. your loss is great and only you as a loving daughter can know this and never let me tell you will you find his place filled. I know all this I have like yourself neither father nor mother and speaking for self concerning words from our parents to us when present ... will come to us when our loved ones are gone: you must try and sustain yourself for your family and I know you have a kind and loving husband, children Brother and Sister [to] take care of your health. I will expect a letter from you in due time My love joined with my daughters Joan and Hannah to your husband, yourself and children and all your family. I am with love and wishing all happiness, your

- Abby Lennington

[2] On "Prof. Leopold Thurn" see for example a display ad for the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of September 20, 1865.

[3] "Furnishing goods" included shirts, socks, underwear, belts, scarfs, collars, and the like. One ad listed: "Boys' and Children's Furnishing Goods: Shirts, Waists, Blouses, Underwaists, Hose Supporters, Neckwear, Collars; all carefully selected and a profusion of styles and qualities that will make easy choosing." -- Muncie Morning News, April 14, 1900.

Here are the census records for Leopold and Sidonie:

Leopold THURN on familysearch.org
Census Place New York, New York (Manhattan), New York City-Greater, New York
1880
Birth Year <1822>
Birthplace GER. BRANDENBURG
Age 58
Occupation Childrens Furnishing Goods
Marital Status M
Race W
Head of Household Leopold THURN
Relation Self
Father's Birthplace GER BRAN.
Mother's Birthplace GER. BRAN.

Lidonis THURN
Census Place New York, New York (Manhattan), New York City-Greater, New York
1880
Birth Year <1833>
Birthplace SAXONY
Age 47
Occupation Children Furnishing Goods
Marital Status M
Race W
Head of Household Leopold THURN
Relation Wife
Father's Birthplace SAXONY
Mother's Birthplace SAXONY

[4] Here is what a New York Times reporter had to say about the Windmuller-Hague wedding.

{New York Times, June 6, 1901}

[5] Finley Peter Dunne was famous for his character Mr. Dooley. Dunne's work is funny and quotable: "A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case." He was a Chicagoan but in 1890 he "moved to New York City, where he married Mary Abbott's daughter Margaret Abbott, had four children and continued to write books and articles. He died in 1936 in New York at age 68 of cancer." -- Finley Peter Dunne

[6] The entry reads: "New York, Jan'y 1st 1881. Saturday. Remain home all day, have quite a number of New Year Cards, and also calls among them Mr. Thurn, husband of Sidonie Dittmarsch of Dresden. Fred Steins and Carl Prox of Brooklyn take supper with us Measure children, Georges height 5 feet 6 inches his weight 127#. Paulas height 5 feet 4¼ inches her weight 110#. I weigh #191, and wife 160#."

[7] The place was on Collender's Point, in Noroton, Darien, Connecticut. It's possible that Caroline leased a smaller house on the property of the estate, but the report in the Times does not make that seem to be so: "Fish & Marvin have leased furnished for the Summer the Colonial House and three acres owned by John D. Crimins at Collender's Point, Noroton, to Mrs. A.C. Windmuller of this city." -- New York Times, March 18, 1915. For more information on the Crimmins place, see Excerpts from John D. Crimmins' Diary.
I like this view of the sound from the side porch.

{Source: Stamford Advocate, reproduced under fair use provisions of copyright}

[8] When Caroline was married to Afred Hague she had also lived in her mother's Upper East Side townhouse. See note 4 for mention of Sidonie's home at 52 E. 66th. Some details about the property are given in a NYT real estate offering: 52 EAST 66TH STREET. Here's the relevant part of a report on the mental condition of Adolph's father, my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller.

{New York Times, September 24, 1913}

[9] Caroline's sister marries for second time
NYT 20 Oct 1909

[10] Here's the record:

Name: Derwin Deforest
Home in 1880: New York City, New York, New York
Age: 35
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1845
Birthplace: Vermont
Father's birthplace: Vermont
Mother's birthplace: Vermont
Neighbors: View others on page
Occupation: Salesman Dry Goods
Marital Status: Single
Race: White
Gender: Male

It's surely irrelevant, but a popular poet of the time, Col. John A. Joyce, dedicated a poem to Derwin Deforest:

Jewels of memory. By Col. John A. Joyce (Washington, D.C., Gibson brothers, 1895) "The Voice of the Clock (Dedicated to Derwin De Forest, of New York.)
TICK, tick, the moments fly,
Tick, tick, we live and die.
Tick, tick, goes the hour,
Tick, tick, fades the flower.

Tick, tick, heart beats go,
Tick, tick, weal or woe.
Tick, tick, soon are fled,
Tick, tick, lost and dead.

Tick, tick, days and years,
Tick, tick, smiles and tears.
Tick, tick, wind and wave,
Tick, tick, grief, the grave.

[11] See note 4, above.

[12] Mrs. De Forest leases 30 W. 36th Street:

{New York Times, October 29, 1903}

[13] TITLE GUARANTEE AND TRUST CO., 176 Broadway, New York. Trustees: John Jacob Astor, Frank Bailey, E. T. Bedford, Charles S. Brown, Julien T. Davies. Robert W. de Forest, Robert Godot, Martin Joost, A. D. Jullliard, Clarence H. Kelsey, Woodbury Langdon, James D. Lynch. It. II. Macdouald, James H. Manning, Edgar L. Marston. William J. Matheson, Charles Matlack, William A. Nash, William H. Nichols, Robert Olyphant, Charles A. Peabody, William H. Porter, Frederick Potter, Charles Richardson, Henry Itoth. James Speyer, Sauford H. Steele, Paul M. Warburg, Ellis D. Williams, Louis Windmuller. -- Directory of directors in the city of New York (Audit Co., 1911)

[14] HONOR LOUIS WINDMULLER; Members of the Reform Club Praise His Long Services.

Sussdorfs

2011-10-15T09:14:00.004-04:00

I recently heard from a woman whose home is not far from the place where my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller, lived for much of the nineteenth century.[1] I've written about this summer home of his quite a few times already.[2] The email she sent me links to a set of comments on a blog called Ephemeral New York. The subject of the post is a drypoint print by a highly-regarded artist named Martin Lewis[3] The print is called "Rainy Day, Queens" and it shows an urban scene having a broad street rising as it recedes. In the foreground pedestrians and a few cars occupy what is evidently a viaduct, overpass, or bridge and in the background there are apartment buildings on both sides of the avenue. Here's a small image of the print. You can see a larger view here.[4]

In readers' comments to the blog post you find speculation about the location of the scene which Lewis depicts. Most commenters believe it shows a viaduct over the Long Island Railroad in Long Island City or the nearby Sunnyside Yards. I favor this set of opinions.[5] On the other hand One commenter, with support from a couple of others, says the artist is standing on a street in Woodside and is facing the Sunnyside rail yards to the west. This commenter says the artist depicts a "crumbling bluestone sidewalk on Skillman Ave.," with Roosevelt Avenue to his back. "The crest of the hill," he says, "is the point where 54th Street zig-zags across Skillman."

This commenter, T.J. Connick, gives a link to a photo in NYPL's Digital Gallery. It's this photo that prompted the email message to me about my blog post. The writer, Deniz Hughes, points out that the photo shows property that was adjacent to the place owned by my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller.

Here's the photo. It shows the home of the Sussdorf family, who were not only the Windmuller's neighbors but also their friends. Louis Windmuller was twenty years younger than Gustav Sussdorf, but they held much in common. Both were born in Germany and had emigrated to America at a young age. Both were successful merchants who spent winter months in Manhattan and summered on their estates in Woodside. Both were religious converts who helped establish St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church at Woodside. Windmuller and Gustav's son William H. served many years as church vestrymen and their wives and daughters were active in the church's Sunday school and social activities. I've written about the two families before.[6]

{The accompanying description says: "54th Street (foreground, unpaved), between Roosevelt Ave. (left) and Skillman Ave. (right), showing in the foreground the G. Susdorff house from 1860-1873. It was gone in April 1925. In the background are homes on 52nd Street. The photo was taken in 1924. Source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This detail from the photo shows the Sussdorf home.

This detail shows a row of houses on 52nd Street.

This is an obituary of Gustav Sussdorf.[7]

{Newtown Register, October 29, 1896}

This is a detail from a fire insurance atlas page. I've marked it to show where the photographer was standing. Note that the atlas reflects an earlier time; it was made a decade before the photo and a couple of decades before the print was made.

{Detail from Queens, Vol. 2, Double Page Plate No. 15; Part of Ward Two Woodside; [Map bounded by Kelly Ave., Woodside Ave., Greenpoint Ave., Thomson Ave.; Including Astoria Road (Highway to Calvary Cemetery) (Celtic Ave.), Middleburg Ave., Jackson Ave., Solon St., Mecke St.] 1908 updated to 1912, Atlas of the borough of Queens, city of New York, based upon official plans and maps on file in the various city offices; supplemented by careful field measurements and personal observations by and under the supervision of Hugo Ullitz. First and second wards: Long Island City and Newtown. Source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This detail from a 1923 map shows the general area around the Windmuller and Sussdorf properties. I've marked it to show the rough location of the two houses, the school, and the photographer.

{Map of the borough of Queens. "Supplement to The Brooklyn Eagle Almanac, 1923." Williams Map & Guide Co. Source: Library of Congress}

This satellite image shows the location of the two houses and camera.

In the lower right of the satellite image, just below Doughboy Plaza, you can see a school, P.S. 11. Here is a photo of the school as it looked in 1925. The photographer was standing on the southwest corner of 56th St. and Woodside Ave. The trees to the right are on the lower part of the Windmuller property.

{"Woodside Avenue, at the S.W. corner of 56th Street, showing Public School No. 11. Taken by Percy Loomis Sperr, 1925. May be reproduced." Source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

NYPL has another photo showing the construction of 54th St. northward from Skillman Ave. in 1931, the same year Martin Lewis made his drypoint print. Here's a link to the image: Queens: 54th Street - Skillman Avenue (1931). The trees in the background of this photo are on the Windmuller estate. The Sussdorf estate is to the left, behind the apartment building and P.S. 11 is at right.

I see nothing in these photos to lend support to the thesis that the Lewis print shows this part of Queens. For more views of this part of Woodside, see a blog called Woodside, A Tour Through the Past, Present, and Culture of a Historic Urban Community. The blog was created by a student at SUNY Purchase named Janel Lloyd. In one section of the blog, Lloyd pairs photos of the area covered by the Sussdorf and Windmuller states. The pairs show what the place looked like in ca. 1940 and what they look like today. This screen shot shows one such pair and gives Lloyd's description.

{See Lloyd's "Denotation" page for source information. I'm using this screen shot under copyright fair use provisions.}

The photograph on the left, from ca. 1940, was taken from a position not far from the place from which the photograph of the Sussdorf house was made, but the camera was pointed further north in this case. The photo is similar to one taken from the elevated platform of the LIRR station at the corner of Roosevelt and Woodside Avenues. If you look closely, you can see Hell Gate Bridge on the horizon at left. Nearby buildings are single family homes, either in row houses or unattached. There are multi-story apartments in the distance, outside the bounds of Woodside.

The area around Woodside was, of course, urbanized, but the transition from rural farmland, to suburban single-family houses, to multi-story apartment buildings was a slow one. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, urbanization spread eastward through and beyond Long Island City, but some communities on its eastern border, like Woodside, nonetheless retained much of their rural or suburban character. This photo of a homestead in Maspeth, a mile and a half south of the Sussdorf and Windmuller homes, shows an old farmstead as it looked in 1929, just two years before the Lewis made the print.

{"55th Drive (foreground, along line of fence), north side, between 58th Street (right) and 56th Street (left), showing the Nicholas Covert house and outbuilding. This is one a set of four views taken on different occasions and from slightly different angles." September 1929. May be reproduced. Source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

NYPL has another photo showing the undeveloped nature of Woodside and its environs in the 1920s. One of them I've previously discussed.[8] Here's another.

{"Maspeth Ave., north side, between 55th and 56th Streets, showing a northwest view of the James Way farmhouse, last in a set of four pictures." 1924. May be reproduced. Source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

---------

Some sources:

Know where this was?

Woodside, A Tour Through the Past, Present, and Culture of a Historic Urban Community

Denizblog

Ephemeral New York

NYPL Digital Gallery

----------

Notes:

[1] She's a Woodside resident named Deniz Hughes and she has an excellent blog called DenizBlog.

[2] The "Woodside" label in the list in the right hand panel leads you to posts on that subject. In particular note:

[3] Prints by Martin Lewis fetch a great deal at auction. One of the "Rainy Day" prints sold for more than $16,000 not long ago.

[4] I'd show a large version of the print, but I'm unsure of the copyright status of images made from it.

[5] This photo, from NYPL's digital gallery, gives a general idea of what I believe to be the area which the print shows. The photo shows an apartment building on only one side of the street, the sidewalk barrier at the right of the overpass is different, and of course the Lewis print does not show the Manhattan skyline in the distance. On the other hand the slope and the light fixture are right, so the artist may, as the commenter says, have been located at one of the neighboring overpasses in this area.

[6] On the relationship between Windmullers and Sussdorfs see the blog posts listed above and also Friedle women and three country homes.

[7] Here the obituary of Gustav Sussdorf's son, Louis Albert, from the New York Times. It's tempting to think that the Sussdorf's named him in honor of a son of Louis Windmuller, named Louis Adelbert or Albert, who died in 1872 age 10 days.

Louis Albert Sussdorf Former Stock Exchange Member Dies at Long Island Home.

Louis Albert Sussdorf, a retired member of the New York Stock Exchange, died on Sunday at his Summer home in Bridgehampton, L.I. The Rev. Ernest Sinfield of St. George's Protestant Episcopal Church, Flushing, will officiate at the funeral services this afternoon in Mr. Sussdorf's former residence at 144-51 Sanford Avenue, flushing. Born in Charleston, S.C., seventy years ago, Mr. Sussdorf became a member of the shipping firm of Sussdorf, Zalvo & Co. He formerly lived in Elmhurst, Queens.

Surviving are a widow, Mrs. Rebecca Moore Hyatt Sussdorf; two sons, Louis Sussdorf Jr., counselor at the American Embassy in Brussels, Belgium, and Ralph H. Susdorf of Orange, Calif., and two daughters, Mrs. Grace M. Thayer and Miss Elsie Purdy Sussdorf.

Burial will take place in Old St. James churchyard, Elmhurst.

-- New York Times, July 18, 1934

And here is the death notice for Gustav's wife, Jane: "Sussdorff. At Woodside, L. I., July 13, 1902, JANE M. SUSSDORFF, wife of the late Gustav, in the 76th year of her age. Funeral service at her late residence Tuesday, July 15, at four P. M. Carriages will be in waiting at station on arrival of 3:30 P. M. train from Long Island City. Interment at convenience of family. Charleston (S. C.) papers please copy." -- New York Herald, July 14, 1902

[8] It's the one I linked to above as being similar to the 1940 photo shown on Janel Lloyd's blog.

dead man's curve

2011-10-02T09:37:00.001-04:00

This magazine cover shows a Manhattan intersection called "Dead Man's Curve." The place got its name from treacherous conditions caused by cable-pulled street cars as they rounded the curve at the southwest corner of Union Square. The treacherous conditions arose from an idiosyncrasy of the cable system that was used in the 1890s: the cable's speed was just right for the straight passage up and down Broadway, but at the curve where Broadway turned onto the the square the pace was dangerously fast. The cable speed was constant; it was the curve that produced the danger. This illustration shows how pedestrians felt about the risks they took when crossing that intersection.

{'Dead Man's Curve'—New York's Most Dangerous Crossing, by W. A. Rogers (Harper's
Weekly, March 27, 1897); source: cdlib}

In 1907, my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller, noted that the Dead Man's Curve problem had been solved at Union Square and the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 23rd Street had taken its place.[1] His letter to the editor on the subject is on the left. To the right is an excerpt from the article which he references.[2]

{On the left: "Perils of the Cruel City," New York Times, February 6, 1907; on the right: "Choate Argues for 14th St. Expresses," New York Times, February 1, 1907}

This photograph shows, at left, the "new" Dead Man's Curve on the southwest corner of Madison Park.

{Madison Square, New York, N.Y. (Detroit Publishing Co., taken between 1910 and 1915); seventh photo in a nine-part panorama set; source: Prints and Photos Div., Library of Congress}

This detail of that photo is marked to show the street car lines, the Seward statue, and, by white arrows, the path Louis Windmuller would take, walking north on the east side of Broadway. You can see a traffic cop in the intersection and quite a bit of traffic (though not nearly as much at the early hour when this photo was taken as there would be at noon and beyond).

This photo shows Broadway and Fifth Avenue as they separate from one another and proceed northward away from the park. Louis Windmuller would take the sidewalk on the west side of the park and then walk up the east side of Fifth Avenue, stopping at the Reform Club on 27th if he wished (he was a founder and, as its treasurer, had bought the building at 2 East 27th) and then on to his "winter" home on 46th.

{Madison Square, New York, N.Y. (Detroit Publishing Co., taken between 1910 and 1915); first photo in a nine-part panorama set; source: Prints and Photos Div., Library of Congress}

Taken 15 years earlier, this photo shows the intersection at bottom right, with the west side of the park at near left and, at far left, the passage of Fifth Avenue to the north.

{Manhattan: Broadway - 23rd Street (Brown Brothers, 1893); source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This map shows Louis Windmuller's route from his office at 20 Reade Street to his winter home at 19 W. 46th, with the Reform Club, at 27th, in between. Both the 14th St. and 23rd St. Dead Man's Curves are shown in green. Windmuller was a famous walker. I've previously written about his walking, his office on Reade St., and his winter home on 46th.[3] I've also previously written about the block that's outlined in red.[4]

{Manhattan Hotels and Theaters Map, 1906; source: Library of Congress}

This is another view of the intersection, this time with the camera facing northwest. The photo was taken during a quiet moment in 1901 by William Henry Jackson, a well-known photographer working for the Detroit Publishing Co. (notice the three bicyclists, one of them a lady). The Fifth Avenue Hotel, at left, was owned by Amos Eno, a dry goods merchant who became a fabulously-wealthy real estate magnate. The Reform Club building on 27th had been Eno's home; was purchased from the estate at his death.

{Madison Square, New York, by William Henry Jackson, for the Detroit Publishing Co. (New York, 1901), first of three photographs making up a panorama; Prints and Photos Div., Library of Congress}

This photo shows the Dead Man's Curve at Union Square after electrification of the street cars. No one, including the lone (male) bicyclist, seems to be worried about the risk of injury.

{Lincoln Statue, Union Square, 1906; source: wikipedia}

This detail from a panorama photo shows the building owned by the Reform Club in 1911, just after the club had moved to new quarters in the financial district. The Club's address had been 2 East 27th Street, but the building is now identified as 233 Fifth Avenue.

{Detail from plate no. 24 in the book Fifth Avenue, New York, from Start to Finish (Welles & Co., 1911); source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This panorama photo shows the block on the east side of Fifth Avenue just north of Madison Square and just south of the Reform Club location.

{Detail from plate no. 22 in the book Fifth Avenue, New York, from Start to Finish (Welles & Co., 1911); source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

---------------

Some sources:

DEADMAN'S CURVE REFORM.; New Traffic Regulations for the Benefit of Pedestrians, New York Times, January 10, 1905

Dead Man's Curve on snopes.com

Union Square and the demise of 'Dead Man's Curve'

CHOATE ARGUES FOR 14TH ST. EXPRESSES, Appears Before Transit Board for Those Opposing 23d Street. MORE NEED AT 14TH STREET Metz Resolution on Bridge Subway Loop Opposed by the Mayor -- Committee to Confer with B.R.T., New York Times, February 1, 1907
"There would also be added danger at 'dead man's curve,' he went on, evidently under the impression that the curve was at Twenty-third Street. The term has been applied more generally at Fourteenth Street."

NOTED CITIZENS OUT FOR WALKING RECORD, Gaynor, Choate, Hornblower, Parsons, and Windmuller Form the Pedestrians Club, New York Times, February 7, 1913

THE REFORM CLUB'S HOME.; PLANNING PLEASANT QUARTERS FOR ITS MANY MEMBERS, New York Times, April 18, 1890

IN THE REAL ESTATE FIELD, New York Times, March 18, 1910. "Reform Club Buys Building -- The Reform Club, through Louis Windmuller, Treasurer, purchased yesterday from the Cutting estate the building 9 South William Street, facing also on Mill Lane and extending through this lane to Stone Street. The building will be altered so that the club can use it as a midday luncheon club and for committee members to meet. Limited space will compel the club to restrict membership to a small number beyond the present roster."

A.R. ENO'S WILL PROBATED, It Disposes of an Estate Estimated at from $20,000,000 to $40,000,000. SMALL SHARE FOR SON JOHN C. All the Heirs Waive Citation and There Will Be No Contest -- Many Bequests Paid During the Testator's Lifetime Are Canceled New York Times, March 12, 1898. First para: "The will of Amos R. Eno was filed for probate with the Surrogate yesterday. Mrs. Antoinette E. Wood, a daughter of the testator, was the proponent, and in her petition she says that the value of the real estate and personalty is "not definitely known." The combined values are estimated to be between $20,000,000 and $40,000,000."

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[1] The problem at Union Square had been solved by switching from cable-pulled to electric-powered cars.

[2] Eventually the City would decide that 14th Street should have an express stop; 23rd Street should not. Choate and Windmuller were acquaintances, probably friends. They served together on corporate boards (including the German-American Insurance Co.) and were walking companions, as evidenced by this article: NOTED CITIZENS OUT FOR WALKING RECORD, Gaynor, Choate, Hornblower, Parsons, and Windmuller Form the Pedestrians Club, New York Times, February 7, 1913

[3] Some blog posts on his walking, the office, and the 46th St. place:

[4] My two recent posts on 23rd St. between 5th and 6th are 23rd St. and New York Newsstand, 1903.

23rd St.

2011-09-29T08:23:00.006-04:00

When this photo was taken the block that it shows, 23rd street west of 5th Avenue, was a retail center for women's clothing, jewelry, toys, books, and furniture. Some buildings, like McCreery's, at right, were huge dry goods stores. Others, like Best & Co next door, were more modest in size but still given over entirely to one business. Most housed storefronts at street level and, above, a mixture of offices, small manufacturing operations, wholesale merchants, and upper-floor retail stores. Some of the shops are still pretty well known. Best & Co. is one such. Others are Bonwit Teller, F.A.O. Schwarz, and the publishing house, G. P. Putnam's Sons. A dwindling number of the old brownstones were still private residences. No. 49, for example, was the home of W.C. Schermerhorn, whose family owned much Manhattan property, including some of this block. More typically, No. 14, where Edith Wharton had been born, was now the James McCutcheon & Co. dry goods store, selling imported handkerchiefs, table linens, towels and embroideries. There was one variety theater on the block and many nearby.[1] And there were many galleries and artists' show rooms (one of which showed a portrait of my great-grandfather in 1900).[2] The other major industry in the vicinity was hostelry. There was one famous hotel on the block and quite a few others, both large and small, in the vicinity.[3]

{caption: 23rd [Twenty-third] Street, east from 6th Ave. [Sixth Avenue], New York, N.Y., Detroit Publishing Co., circa 1908; source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division}

The photo is interesting partly because it lacks the crystal clarity of other photos by the Detroit Publishing Co. Compare, for example, the image of the same general location taken a few years before (which I showed in a recent post) or the images of nearby Madison Park which I showed a bit more than a year ago. The haze which obscures the photo's background gives the appearance of great depth and provokes a small sense of mystery.

The photographer was standing on the platform of the 23rd Street station of the Sixth Avenue elevated railway. The large building to the right, McCreery's, is on the corner of 23rd and 6th. The block ends just before the tallest building visible in the smoky distance — the famous Flatiron Building. In between, we should be able to see 17 buildings, but there appear to be only six or seven.

This detail from a 1910 fire insurance map names most of the structures on the south side of the block.

{Detail from: Manhattan, Atlas 114, V. 4, Plate No. 1; Map bounded by 6th Ave., W. 25th St., 5th Ave., W. 22nd St., (Sanborn Map Company, 1910); source: NYPL Digital Gallery. Click here for two see the atlas sheet from which this detail was taken.}

To our left, the view is even less certain. We can make out the last few letters of the sign at the Eden Musee, then the "Toys" sign at F.A.O. Schwarz. There seem to be just two buildings between that one and the hotel on the end of the block (whose sign you can just make out at top: "Fifth Avenue Hotel", of which only the "UE" and "L" are visible). However the insurance map shows five buildings between F.A.O. Schwarz and the hotel.

The foreshortening on this, the north side, is more pronounced beyond the hotel. At that point we should see a wide intersection (where 23rd, Broadway, and 5th Ave. come together) and the southern end of Madison Square Park. We do see some trees, but the separation between the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the next building to the east, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, seems much to small. Similarly, the Flatiron Building seems squeezed between the Union Trust building on the west and the Hotel Bartholdi to its east.

At the farthest point in our sightline we can see the 23rd St. station of the Third Avenue elevated railway. Intervening buildings include the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the College of the City of New York.

Here are some details from the photo.

There are many more people afoot than there are being carried about in a vehicle. At this date, at the dawn of the motor age, there are hardly any private motor cars. People took the elevated railways, the street cars, and the horse-cabs. You can see by the clock of Le Bolt & Co., jewelers, that it's just a bit past noon. The clock is directly across from the signpost for the Eden Musee and both are placed high enough to be seen by people exiting the 23rd St. station of the Sixth Avenue El. To the left, on the north side of the street, merchants have put up awnings against the bright morning sun. The iron-gated steps lead to the Schermerhorn residence. Click to view this detail full-size.

The broad sidewalk on the south side of the street is crowded with window shoppers and pedestrians. It must be summer since many women are wearing light-colored clothing.

In this view you can see a sign for the Lilliputian Bazaar in the Best & Co. building. The bazaar specialized in clothing for children. You can also see that Bonwit Teller specializes in Women's Outer Garments.

The Flatiron Bldg. seems much closer to Stern Brothers than it is.

The photographer who took the picture worked for the Detroit Publishing Co. which specialized in postcards, both color and black and white. Here's a postcard which they made from the same negative as the one shown above.[4] In it, you can't see the Flatiron Building at all.

{source: wikipedia}

From the postures of the people in the street it's easy to tell that the postcard was made from the negative. It looks at first glance that the postcard is simply a cropped version of the negative, but although that's true on three of its sides, the left side of the postcard shows a bit more than the black & white image. This is yet another mystery. The postcard may have the extra bit stitched in (Detroit Publishing occasionally combined two negatives to make a card). Or, perhaps the scanner from which the b&w image was made somehow cut off the left edge.

This next postcard was made about the same time and from nearly the same spot on the platform of the El station, but at a different time of day, by a different publishing organization, and with use of a different process of colorization.[5]

{Caption: Postcard: 23rd Street in Manhattan, New York City, published in 1907 or before; source: this card is available on a number of web sites, my source for this copy was flickr}

The scrawled note says "A windy day, and I have a bad case of blues. Deb." The other side is addressed to Dr. E.L. Johnson, Iron River, Douglas Co., Missouri. As you can see, the card identifies itself as "Twenty Third St. Shopping District, New York". The publisher is identified on the back: "Souvenir Post Card Co. New York and Berlin"[6]

Within the next five years the block would be transformed and by 1920 most of the retail stores had moved uptown as warehouses and lofts were erected in their place.

Here, via Google Street View, is what it looks like today.

View Larger Map
And here, by contrast, is what it looked like during a snowstorm in 1905.

{Caption: Bloc[k]aded cars on 23rd St., New York. [Blockaded cars on Twenty-third Street, New York.] (1905); source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

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Some sources:

Demolished buildings, What we lost

FAO Schwarz in wikipedia

Knoedler & Company

GOUPIL'S GALLERY, New York Times, November 29, 1876

"Reform Club" in Club men of New York, their occupations, and business and home addresses: sketches of each of the organizations: college alumni associations (Republic Press, 1893)

The Ehrich Brothers Store, New York Times, February 12, 1995

KOSTER & BIAL'S TO BE SOLD, New York Times, August 18, 1893

A NEW MUSIC HALL, The Trocadero on West Twenty-Third Street Opened Last Night with an Excellent Variety Programme, New York Times, March 10, 1896

JACKSON-MACK CO. FAILS FOR $1,000,000, New York Times, October 12, 1912

MRS. SALLODE AFTER SCHNEIDER.; Determined to Purity Her Neighborhood in West Twenty-fourth Street, New York Times, August 8, 1894

IN THE REAL ESTATE FIELD, New York Times, July 15, 1910 ("the cloak and suit firm of Bonwit, Teller Co., now located at 58 West Twenty-third Street")

TWENTY-THIRD STREET'S BUSY RETAIL BLOCK DESTINED FOR GREAT WHOLESALE CENTRE, New York Times, March 1, 1914

W. C. SCHERMERHORN BURIED, New York Times, January 5, 1903.

New York's Theatres, Old and New, New York Times, June 15, 1902

A history of the New York stage from the first performance in 1732 to 1901 by Thomas Allston Brown (Dodd, Mead and company, 1903)

Manhattan Street Directory (Manhattan Guide Company, 1901)

Passing of the Fifth Avenue Hotel About to Remove One of New York's Noted Landmarks, New York Times, July 7, 1907

MADISON SQUARE A GREAT BUSINESS CENTRE; RADICAL TRANSFORMATION IN RECENT YEARS, New York Times, May 19, 1912

Souvenir Post Card Co. 1905-1914: "268 Canal Street, New York, NY. A major publisher of a variety of postcard types. They used three different printers over the course of their business, which changed the look of their cards. Some of the early cards were printed with the name E. Frey (owner?) on them. The company was purchased by Valentine and Sons. and they produced cards in America under the name Valentine-Souvenir Co."

IN THE REAL ESTATE FIELD; Twenty-third Street Concern to Move to Fifth Avenue, New York Times, June 30, 1906

From Wharton to Starbucks -- No. 14 West 23rd Street

IRT Third Avenue Line in wikipedia

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Notes:

[1] At the center of the block on the north side, the Eden Musee possessed a music hall as well as wax works and dining room. Nearby theaters and halls included Proctor's Twenty-third Street Theatre and the Trocadero or Bon Ton (one block to the west), the Grand Opera House (farther west, at 8th Avenue), the Madison Square Theatre (on 24th just west of Broadway), the Lyceum (on 4th Ave. between 23rd and 24th), the Fifth Avenue Theatre (Broadway and 28th), and Miner's (8th Ave near 25th). The old Madison Square Garden took up a whole block (26th-27th, Madison-4th Ave.). The block had formerly possessed the famous Booth's Theatre at the corner of 23rd and 6th Ave.

[2] I now have this portrait. Here are some of the galleries near the block: The Artist Artisan Institute was a block to the west. The most famous nearby gallery was Goupil's, part of Knoedler & Co. (5th Ave. and 22nd.) Other nearby galleries included the National Academy of Design (23rd at 4th Ave.), L. Crist Delmonico (5th Ave. near 22nd), Klackner Art Gallery (7 W. 28th), and William Schaus (5th Ave. near 25th).

[3] Fifth Avenue Hotel, Hoffman House, Albemarle Hotel, Brunswick Hotel, Bartholdi Hotel, Richfield Hotel,

[4] The colorizing process they used, called photochrom, used black and white negatives in a lithographic printing operation.

[5] There's a black and white version of this card on wikipedia with the following information: "Unmailed postcard. Store Web page states year published is estimated to be 1910 (title of Web page: "NY~NEW YORK CITY~23rd Street at Night~c1910 BEAUTY" Picture side of postcard (only side shown on store Web page) states "1940 ILLUSTRATED POST CARD CO., NEW YORK." The number "1940" is a typical inventory or catalog number of a type seen on many postcards in the early Twentieth century." Of the Illustrated Post Card Co., the web site of the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York City says: "Illustrated Post Card 1905-1914 520 West 84th Street, New York, NY. This major publisher produced a wide variety of tinted halftone postcards in series that were printed by Emil Pinkau in Leipzig, Saxony. Each city or location of their color card sets were assigned the same number prefix. They also published an unnumbered series of chromolithographic fine art cards that were printed in Dresden. Many of their early cards do not have their name on them, only their distinct eagle logo.

[6] Here's the database entry for this publisher in the web site of the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York City: "Souvenir Post Card Co. 1905-1914. 268 Canal Street, New York, NYA major publisher of a variety of postcard types. They used three different printers over the course of their business, which changed the look of their cards. Some of the early cards were printed with the name E. Frey (owner?) on them. The company was purchased by Valentine and Sons. and they produced cards in America under the name Valentine-Souvenir Co."

17th Light Dragoons in Newtown, Queens

2011-09-24T13:22:00.004-04:00

This post concerns a British regiment called the 17th Light Dragoons. The 17th Light Dragoons were a predecessor of the 17th Lancers, about which I wrote the other day. The post is also about Newtown, Queens, during the American Revolution. In the middle of the nineteenth century a small village called Woodside would emerge within Newtown and this village was the place where my great-grandfather build his family a home.

I've written previously about Newtown. The place was inhabited first by American Indians, then colonial Dutch, and, from the 1660s onward, by British subjects.[1] The Newtown freeholders tended their fertile lands with care and eventually became relatively prosperous farmers, providing for themselves and selling their surplus to the burgeoning metropolis across the East River. However, when, toward the end of the eighteenth century, colonial aspirations came into serious conflict with Parliamentary prerogatives, the men and women of Newtown found this prosperity to be in jeopardy. Along with other Americans across the Eastern Seaboard, they divided into two camps over the proper way to handle their grievances. One side, the tories, argued for conciliation and supplication. They saw continued pursuit of legal redress as the best response. For the most part, these families were among the more prosperous inhabitants. The other side believed that the moderate course recommended by tories had been tried over and over without success. These men, the whigs, argued for resistance and, if circumstances warranted, decisive action. In the middle years of the 1770s, the positions of the two opposing groups grew increasingly polarized.

When the whigs at last came to believe that British oppression had become unbearable, they formed governing councils in preparation for armed conflict. As these committees formed, the freeholders of Newtown, who were mostly whigs, were set in opposition to neighboring communities, all of which had loyalist majorities.

In December 1774 a committee appointed by Newtown's citizens declared themselves willing to fight to redress their grievances. They said actions of the British Parliament were "intended absolutely to deprive his Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the inhabitants of the American colonies, of their most inestimable rights and privileges, by subjugating them to the British Parliament, and driving them to the dire necessity of submitting to have their property taken from them without their consent." And they resolved to oppose these "tyrannical and oppressive acts."[2]

Within months hostilities broke out. In the whole of New York the whigs outnumbered tories by a considerable margin and thus whigs of the New York militia, with help from the men of Newtown, were able to disarm the better-known men among the Queens tories.[3] The tide began to turn against the whigs when, in the summer of 1776, British troops from Boston began to assemble in preparation for the Battle of Long Island.

The 17th Light Dragoons figured in the early stages of this battle as they had at Bunker Hill. By one account, the colonial army might have been forced to submit rather than retreating, but an instance of General Howe's habitual passivity came to the Americans' rescue: "On the action on Long Island the 17th were to find themselves in an excellent position to trap the American army who were pinned with their backs to the river. Unfortunately, General Howe did not take advantage of the situation, and 12,000 Americans rowed to safety to Manhattan Island." -- American War of Independence

During the summer of 1776, after the British began to offload from their ships at Staten Island, members of the Newtown militia then were assigned to deprive their enemy of needed provisions by driving livestock as far away as they could.[3] The 17th Light Dragoons first shows up in Newtown history when a detachment that had been sent to disrupt the whig effort encountered members of Newtown's own light-horse militia. Here's one account of the conflict:

SEIZURE OF WHIGS

Newtown — Jona. Coe and Hezekiah Field, two lighthorse, with regimentals on, returned to White Pot, August 28 [1776]. They had been driving off stock. Early next morning, when starting to cross the Sound, they were seized by British light-horse from Jamaica. Lieut. Coe had thrown his epaulett in the bushes. They were carried to Flatbush jail, where Coe died of dysentery, having suffered much for want of food and necessary attendance. His body was refused his friends for burial.

Richard Bragaw, Robert Moore, George Brinckerhoff, Abm. Devine, and Ludlum Haire, had been with Woodhull, driving off stock. After they left him, they were surprised at Hinchman's tavern, Jamaica. A British light-horse rode up, when Moore came out and received a sabre cut, which nearly severed his two fingers. The other four were taken to the prison ship, where they were urged to enlist; but, by bribing a friend to government, were released. --Documents and letters intended to illustrate the revolutionary incidents of Queens county

Other whigs were not so fortunate. General Woodhull, named above, was the officer in charge of keeping provisions out of British hands. While directing this effort he was captured by members of the 17th Light Dragoons and mistreated. Some accounts say that the mistreatment came from the dragoons; others say it was a British infantry officer, accompanying the dragoons, who attacked the defenseless man with his sword and that a dragoon officer intervened to stop the outrage.[4]

Several men of Newtown were taken prisoner at this time. The History of Newtown goes on to say that, "Newtown was now open to the enemy, and many of the Whig families, alarmed at their defenseless condition, fled in the utmost confusion. Early the next morning the British light dragoons [i.e., the 17th] entered the town. The tories, in the excess of their triumph, informed against their Whig neighbors. The leading Whigs were imprisoned or sent into exile, and their property was seized by the enemy."[5]

Riker gives an incident of this time:

The light horse scoured the town, and while it was yet early, guided by one George Rapelye, a loyalist, came along the Poor Bowery, and halted at Jacobus Lent's (late Isaac Rapelye's,) to get some bread. Brandishing their naked swords, they declared that they were in pursuit of that d—d rebel, Doctor Riker. The doctor had spent the night in visiting different sections of the town, tearing down Howe's proclamations, that none might be misled, and induced, at this critical juncture, to remain and accept British protection, instead of hasting to the support of the American arms. The females at Mr. Lent's were terrified at the ferocious appearance of the light horse, and observing the haste and greediness with which they broke and ate the dry bread, Balche, a colored bondwoman, innocently inquired of her mistress whether they would not eat them. They dashed on towards Hellgate, but the doctor had escaped in a boat to Barn Island, and thus eluded these demons in human form.

Once they had occupied Queens, the British troops bivouacked in fields while officers and noncoms were quartered in private homes. Officers and noncoms of the 17th were assigned to Newtown. An article by Gus Dallas in the Richmond Hill Record says "Ten to 20 noncoms were assigned to a house. They were ordered to take over just one room in the house, and they shrewdly chose the kitchen, setting up hammocks in tiers. British officers were arrogant, and Queens folk had to tip their hats outdoors or stand like inferiors when speaking to them inside their own homes. Slave owners grumbled that their slaves tended to become snippy and disobedient after they saw how the officers pushed the master around."[6]

The next action seen by the 17th was in the Battle of White Plains[7] and then followed the retreat of Washington's troops, remaining in the South until 1778. In the winter of that year the British feared that the American forces were preparing to attack New York. Here's a report of this, the final appearance of the 17th Light Dragoons in Newtown.

Newtown in the winter of 1778 presented an unusually animated appearance. General Washington was expected to make an attack upon New York, and for the better preservation and safety of the shipping Sir Henry Clinton ordered all vessels not in the service of the government to be removed to Newtown Creek.

A large number of British troops were also barracked here. There were the seventeenth regiment of light dragoons, the Maryland loyalists, the royal Highlanders, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Sterling, who had seen long and arduous service in America during the French and Indian war; the royal artillery, with their cannon and horses; and the thirty-third regiment, Lord Cornwallis. During this period the farmers were subjected to many severe burdens. They were required to furnish from year to year, for the use of the army, the greater portion of their hay, straw, rye, corn, oats and provisions, under pain of being imprisoned and having their crops confiscated. The commissary weighed or measured the produce, and then rendered payment according to the prices fixed by the king’s commissioners. If the seller demanded more it was at the risk of losing the whole. The private soldiers were billeted in the houses of the Whig families. The family was generally allowed one fireplace. Robberies were frequent, and Newtown became a prey to depredation, alarm and cruelty. The civil courts were suspended, and martial law prevailed through seven long years. It was a happy day for Newtown when news arrived that Great Britain had virtually acknowledged our independence, and when her patriotic sons were permitted to return from a tedious exile. -- History of Queens [One notes that it was a happy day for whigs, not, of course, for tories, many of whom would — temporarily or permanently — exile themselves to Canada.]

These images all appear in A History of the 17th Lancers (Duke of Cambridge's Own) by John William Fortescue (Macmillan and co., 1895)

An officer of the 17th Light Dragoons in the late eighteenth century.

Members of the regiment in 1764.

Two private soldiers from the early nineteenth century.

Two private soldiers and an officer, a few decades later.

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Some sources:

HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals. New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882

The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns; also, a particular account of numerous Long island families now spread over this and various other states of the union, by James Riker (D. Fanshaw, 1852)

Documents and letters intended to illustrate the revolutionary incidents of Queens county with connecting narratives, explanatory notes, and additions by Henry Onderdonk (Leavitt, Trow and company, 1846)

Battle of Long Island, Hard Times followed Battle of Long Island, by Gus Dallas for the Richmond Hill Record

Battle of Long Island Hard Times followed Battle of Long Island by Gus Dallas, Printed by The Richmond Hill Record

17th Light Dragoons, a blog

17th Light Dragoons on the British Empire web site

The Battle of Long Island 1776 on the British Battles web site

17th Lancers in wikipedia

The Birth of the American Cavalry

Revolutionary incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties with an account of the Battle of Long Island and the British prisons and prison-ships at New York by Henry Onderdonk (Leavitt & Co., 1849)

The Streets Of New York in Something About Everything Military

American War of Independence, 17th Light Dragoons, The British Empire

17th Light Dragoons

17th Light Dragoons in A Miniature History of the American Revolution

A History of the 17th Lancers (Duke of Cambridge's Own) by John William Fortescue (Macmillan and co., 1895)

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Notes:

[1] James Riker's History of Newtown gives a detailed account of the town's early history. In part, he writes: "Newtown, or, as it was called by the Indians at the time of the discovery of this section of country by Henry Hudson in 1609, "Mespat," was a part of the New Netherlands, the trade from which was exclusively granted by the States-General of Holland in 1621 to the organization known as the West India Company. Valuable cargoes of beaver and other skins were annually shipped from here. The population up to 1638 numbered but a few individuals, in the employ of the company; but in that year the monopoly was abolished, and then trade with the New Netherlands opened to all. The encouragement thus given to emigration was further extended in 1640 by the grant of a new charter, providing for the administration of civil government, and establishing the rights and privileges of the inhabitants on a footing parallel with those in Holland. This had a benign effect, and gave an impulse to emigration, ‘not from Europe’ only but from New England also, many of whose inhabitants, fleeing from religious persecution, took up their abode here... The fertility of the Newtown lands early attracted the attention of colonists... [and] in 1652 a goodly company of Englishmen arrived from New England. [After several name changes, the place became "New Towne" in 1665.] -- The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York

[2] Here's the text:

Having seriously considered the consequences that must evidently flow from the several acts of the British Parliament to raise revenue in America, and likewise that of having power to bind the people of these Colonies by statute in all cases whatsoever; and that of extending the limits of the Admiralty Court, whereby the judges are empowered to receive their salaries and fees from effects to be condemned by themselves, and his Majesty's American subjects deprived of the right of trial by jury; that of empowering the Commissioners of Customs to break open and enter houses, without authority of any civil magistrate; stopping the Port of Boston; changing the form of government in Massachusetts Bay; and the Quebec Bill: all which, as appears to us, are absolutely intended to deprive his Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects of the American Colonies of their most inestimable rights and privileges, by subjugating them to the British Parliament, and driving them to the dire necessity of having their property taken from them without their consent: Resolved,
1. That we consider it our greatest happiness and glory to be governed by the illustrious House of Hanover, and that we acknowledge and bear true allegiance to King George the Third as our rightful sovereign, and under his protection have a right to enjoy the privileges of the Constitution of Great Britain.

2. That man ought to have the disposition of his property, either by himself or his representatives.

3. That it is our indispensable duty to transmit unimpaired to posterity all our most valuable rights and privileges as we have received them from our ancestors—particularly that of disposing of our own property.

4. That as some mode of opposition to the Acts of Parliament imposing taxes in America, has been thought necessary by the inhabitants of the different Colonies on this Continent, to secure their.invaded rights and properties: which mode has been left to the determination of the Delegates sent by each Colony, and met in Congress, at Philadelphia, in September last: they having, among other articles of their association, recommended that a committee be chosen in every county, city, and town, whose business it should be to observe the conduct of all persons touching said association; and, as we are willing to establish harmony and union, we will, so far as our influence extends, endeavor that the measures of Congress be strictly adhered to in this town.

5. As we highly approve of the wise, prudent, and constitutional mode of opposition adopted by our worthy Delegates in the General Congress, to the several late tyrannical and oppressive acts of the British Parliament, we therefore render our most sincere and hearty thanks to those gentlemen for their patriotic spirit in so cheerfully undertaking the difficult and arduous task, for their faithfulness in council, and great wisdom in drawing conclusions, which, through the influence of Divine Providence, we trust will be the means of securing to us of liberty and privileges as freeborn Englishmen, and again re store harmony and confidence throughout the British Empire, which is the hearty wish of all the friends to liberty and foes to oppression.
Signed by order of the Committee,

JACOB BLACKWELL, Chairman.
--
Documents and letters intended to illustrate the revolutionary incidents of Queens county with connecting narratives, explanatory notes, and additions by Henry Onderdonk (Leavitt, Trow and company, 1846)

[3] The whigs wanted both to collect the livestock in a safe area and also, by setting guards on roadways, to prevent tories from communicating with the enemy.

[4] Henry Onderdonk gives several versions of the account and says "as the accounts both written and traditional are conflicting, we ... leave the reader to form his own opinion.". See Revolutionary incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties with an account of the Battle of Long Island and the British prisons and prison-ships at New York by Henry Onderdonk (Leavitt & Co., 1849)

[5] NEWTOWN, in HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY

[6] The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns; also, a particular account of numerous Long island families now spread over this and various other states of the union, by James Riker (D. Fanshaw, 1852)

[7] In the Battle of White Plains the 17th were once again successful:

The hill was now held by green militia and Connecticut and New York troops still shaken by the beating they had recently taken on Long Island. Behind these units, however, were tough, battle-wise Maryland and Delaware regiments. While the main body of the British army was assembling on the plain below the Americans, gunners of the Royal Artillery opened up on Chatterton’s Hill, and the troops there replied to the heavy fire as best they could with two small fieldpieces. When the cannonading eventually lifted, long lines of Hessian and British troops splashed across the Bronx River and moved up the hill with fixed bayonets. They met unexpectedly strong resistance from the militia, and the battle seesawed back and forth, the Americans giving as good as they got.

But while the king’s troops were wavering, trumpets sounded a charge, and the 17th Dragoons galloped into view, terrible with plumed brass helmets and cavalry sabres. It was more than most of the Americans could stand, and their line dissolved. They fled the field, covered by the steadfast Delaware regiment, which brought up the rear and held off the British attack until their fellow soldiers had reached safety.
-- The Streets Of New York

17th Lancers

2011-09-22T15:58:00.000-04:00

The other day I showed a 1903 photo of the newsstand at 23rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. In it you can see a reproduction of a painting from the Second Boer War. It's called "All that was left of them" and it shows a squadron of British cavalry under attack and apparently determined to fight to the finish. The squadron was part of the 17th Lancers regiment and the fight occurred at Modderfontein farm during the Battle of Elands River. This battle took place almost exactly 110 years ago on September 17, 1901.

It may seem odd that the only picture on display in the newsstand would be this one. The event wasn't hot news in 1903 and what's depicted isn't heroic in the usual sense: the lancers' suffering defeat in an ambush by rag-tag Boer farmer-soldiers. By 1903 it was surely known that the battle was at least partly the result of a mistake: some of the Boer commandos had put on captured British uniforms and the lancers couldn't at first tell whether they were being approached (and then surrounded) by friend or foe.[1]

It's possible that the guy who ran the newsstand had some connection to the fight, but just as likely that he showed the picture because it attracted business to his stand. Pictures of battle scenes — even, as here, scenes of imminent defeat — were popular and the painter of this one was one of the best, Richard Caton Woodville. There's inherently a lot of drama in a fight to the last man and Woodville has done a good job of showing both the desperate plight of the lancers and their determination to stand firm.

Here's a copy of the picture as full-color chromolithograph.

{Caption: Woodville, Richard Caton, 1856-1927: All that was left of them. A stirring incident of the late South African War; source: Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand}

A card that accompanies one copy of the print helps explain some of its popularity. The card reads:

All That Was Left Of Them.

At Modderfontein on September the 17th, 1901, the C Squadron of the 17th Lancers were surprised and surrounded. The odds were one hundred and fifty of our Lancers to four hundred of the enemy - the position untenable; - but answering their young officer's shout of 'Death or Glory Boys' they upheld that famous motto of their regiment by fighting till they fell by explosive bullets at twenty, ten, and even five yards.

Such deeds may not win battles, but such courage makes our nation.

The call 'Death or Glory' was the motto of the 17th Lancers and their cap badge showed a death's head with the motto "Or Glory".[1]

Here's what the cap badge looks like.[2] You can see it bottom left in the picture above.

{source: wikipedia}

This detail from the newsstand post shows the print.

{source: Library of Congress Prints and Photos Division}

The 17th has always been a "light" cavalry, meaning that it employed hunter-size horses rather than the large war-horses needed for heavy cavalry.[3] Originally they were dragoons, soldiers who rode to battle but dismounted to engage the enemy, but in the early 1820s they were converted to soldiers who fought on horseback — lancers.

The 17th fought in the battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution[5] and following the Battle of Long Island were encamped in and around Newtown — the locale where my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller, would build his home.[6]

---------

Some sources:

MODDERFONTEIN 17 September 1901 by R W Smith, Military History Journal, Vol 13, No 1, June 2004

The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York

HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals. New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882

The 17th Lancers

The Birth of the American Cavalry

A History of the 17th Lancers (Duke of Cambridge's Own) John William Fortescue
Publisher: Macmillan and co.
Year: 1895

17th Lancers "Death or Glory"

17th Light Dragoons on the British Empire web site

The Battle of Long Island 1776 on the British Battles web site

17th Lancers in wikipedia

Battle of Elands River in wikipedia

Battle of Long Island

Battle of Long Island Hard Times followed Battle of Long Island by Gus Dallas, Printed by The Richmond Hill Record

17th Light Dragoons

----------

Notes:

[1] The 17th Dragoons page on the "British Empire" web site summarizes the fight: "A small group of Boers were forced to find new mounts, food and ammunition or face certain capture. They came across a small outpost of the 17th Lancers who were resting in the grounds of a farm house. The British mistook the Khaki clad Boers for British until they started a withering fire on the unprepared Lancers. The Boers were then joined by another troop of Commandoes who had heard the commotion from afar. These joined in from the rear of the Lancers and helped to inflict serious casualties on the troop of Lancers. In total, 36 Lancers were killed and many more were wounded. The worst aspect of this loss is that they themselves provided the Boers with further mounts and ammunition to continue fighting against the British for an even longer period of time." -- 17th Lancers

[2] The wikipedia article on the 17th Lancers explains: "In 1759, Colonel John Hale of the 47th Foot was ordered back to Britain with General James Wolfe's final dispatches and news of his victory in the Battle of Quebec. After his return, he was rewarded with land in Canada and granted permission to raise a regiment of light dragoons. He formed the regiment in Hertfordshire on 7 November 1759 as the 18th Regiment of (Light) Dragoons, which also went by the name of Hale's Light Horse. The admiration of his men for General Wolfe was evident in the cap badge Colonel Hale chose for the regiment: the Death's Head with the motto 'Or Glory'. In 1761 it was renumbered as the 17th."

[3] Until 1823, the 17th Lancers were the 17th Dragoons. The 17th Dragoons page on the "British Empire" web site explains the emblem: "The evocative Death's Head emblem has been used time and again by desperadoes and tribes from time immemorial. Its first use as a regimental emblem seems to have been by a German unit of Hussars known as the 'Totenkopf' Hussars. As many British units and soldiers had served in Germany at around this time as part of the Seven Years War (1756 - 1763). It is probable that they saw this emblem and revelled in its associations of piracy and plunder - perfect values to a Light Cavalry unit. Indeed, down to the present time the regiment is still commonly referred to as 'The Tots'." -- 17th Light Dragoons

[4] The 17th Dragoons page on the "British Empire" web site explains the difference between light and heavy cavalry in terms of horses: "The Light Dragoons main distinction from their heavier cousins was in the type of horse employed. Rather than use the big and burly heavy cart cobs the Light Dragoons preferred the use of smaller, leaner hunter horses (under 15.1 hands). Originally, the Light Dragoons were not equipped with swords of any sort rather their main armament was a carbine that could have a bayonet fitted, pistols and an axe. They were trained to be able to fire from the saddle. Speed and agility (of rider and horse) were prized over strength and sturdiness. These attributes would prove to be valuable ones in the small scale actions common to colonial campaigns for a long time to come." -- 17th Light Dragoons

[5] Regarding Bunker Hill, one source says "On the action on Long Island the 17th were to find themselves in an excellent position to trap the American army who were pinned with their backs to the river. Unfortunately, General Howe did not take advantage of the situation, and 12,000 Americans rowed to safety to Manhattan Island."

[6] The brigade was encamped where the IND subway yards sit today, near Queens Borough Hall, and officers and noncoms were billeted at homes in Newtown.

[7] Here's an account to the quartering of men in the area around Newtown. "The officers and noncommissioned officers occupied the homes of Queens citizens. Ten to 20 noncoms were assigned to a house. They were ordered to take over just one room in the house, and they shrewdly chose the kitchen, setting up hammocks in tiers. British officers were arrogant, and Queens folk had to tip their hats outdoors or stand like inferiors when speaking to them inside their own homes. Slave owners grumbled that their slaves tended to become snippy and disobedient after they saw how the officers pushed the master around." -- Battle of Long Island

New York Newsstand, 1903

2011-09-20T16:18:00.000-04:00

Here's another Manhattan street scene.[1] It shows stairways leading to an "El" station. The year is 1903, the day is cloudy, and the weather is chilly.

Although stairways dominate the scene, the subject is the newsstand. It seems the photographer has asked passersby to clear the area in front of the stand so that he could get a clear shot of it.

{Caption: "a characteristic sidewalk newstand" (sic), Detroit Publishing Co. 1903; from collections of the Prints and Photos Div. of the Library of Congress}

The presence of the hackney cab and the dress of pedestrians indicates that we're in a relatively upscale location and, indeed, a little sleuthing shows this to be 6th Avenue El at 23rd Street.[2] The El station is the nearest high-speed transit service to destinations that were popular with middle-class and even upper class New Yorkers: The theater district was a block to the west and extended a bit northward as well. Posh blocks of 5th Avenue at its intersection with Broadway lay a block to the east. There, as well, one found a lovely park called Madison Square. The Flatiron Building had just been completed where 5th, Broadway, and 23rd came together.

The Masonic Hall (1875), home of New York Masons, is at the photographer's left elbow. Next to it: the Horner Furniture store (Robert J. Horner's, 1876-1912). Across the street: McCreery's dry goods store on the site where the Edwin Booth Theater formerly stood.

If the people we see descending continue along the sidewalk, they will soon pass the Eden Musee, about half a block away on the north side of 23rd. Some may be headed there; others to the many merchants on this block, including the great Stern Brothers dry goods store just across the street from the Musee. Best & Co. stood next to Stern's (1895-1907) and Bonwit & Teller's next to it (1898-1911).

Here are some details from the photo.

1. The poster at the foot of the stairs is an ad for Hunter Baltimore Rye whiskey ("The First Over The Bars").

2. Knox's Gelatin was heavily advertised in New York at the time.[3] The ads frequently featured white and African-American cooks, as here. I've given a print ad that's closely related to this display in a footnote.[4]

3. Malta Vita was a grain product marketed as a restorative. It was a combination of whole wheat and malt extract. A print ad of this period says it could be used for "renovating your system and cleansing the blood of all impurities."[5]

4. New York's elevated railway system was blessed with some decorative wrought iron.

5. The artistic freedom of the iron work contrasts unfavorably with the highly utilitarian gum machine.

6. Click the image to see the enlarged version. You'll notice the wide variety of magazines on sale. You can find some of these covers on the web. I've given a few in the footnote.[6]

7.

8. This is a reproduction of a painting called "All That Was Left of Them." It shows the last-ditch battle of a British cavalry unit, the 17th Lancers, against Boer guerrillas in September 1901.

This detail from a fire insurance map of 1899 shows the location of the photographer. Click image to view full size.

{Insurance maps of the City of New York (Borough of Manhattan). Surveyed and published by Sanborn-Perris Map Co., Limited, 115 Broadway, 1899, Volume 4;source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

Here's the full sheet from which I took the detail.

This print of a drawing called Snow on the 'El' by Martin Lewis shows the same stairway and newsstand three decades later. A reader of the Shorpy blog owns the print and another reader found an entry for it in a catalog raisonné of the artist.[7]

-------

Some sources:

23rd Street (Manhattan) in wikipedia

New York Songlines: 23rd Street

Stern's in wikipedia

The Castro Building

A patent: Lanahan & Son, William, Baltimore, Md. "The First Over the Bars, Hunter Baltimore Rye."(For Whisky) - Annual report of the Commissioner of Patents, United States. Patent Office (U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1903)

History of Knox Gelatin

Read All About It: 1903 (Shorpy)

--------

Notes:

[1] I've done quite a few others. You'll find them under the Detroit Publishing Co. link in the "Labels" list in the right-hand panel of this page.

[2] The sleuthing was done back in December 2009 by a reader of the Shorpy blog who uses the name jsmakbkr. I've previously written about this area. See Eden Musee, further east on 23rd, see the posts on the Flatiron Building and Madison Square.

[3] Charles Knox, who began manufacturing the gelatin in 1900, was a firm believer in the power of advertising. His ads were highly inventive as well as ubiquitous as this example shows: "During the William Jennings Bryan - William McKinley presidential campaign of 1900, Charles Knox got permission from the Commissioner of Highways to hang fifteen political banners over the streets of New York with the words "Hopes to Win" under each candidate, and across the top: "Knox's Gelatine Always Wins." City officials were irate, but Knox had the permit to hang the banners and declined to remove them. The story, of course, made every newspaper in the state and led to Charles Knox becoming known as "the Napoleon of Advertising." -- History of Knox Gelatin

[4] The current manufacturer has made a history page for Knox Gelatin.

{source: eBay}

[5] Here's the source of the Malta Vita quote:

And here is the page of the Woman's Home Companion from which it comes (March 1903).

source: Harvard University Library

This ad comes from Cosmopolitan, November 1902.

{source: eBay}

[6] These images of magazine covers come from magazineart.org.

{Collier's, December 12, 1902, Special Fiction Number}

{Theatre, December 1902, the cover shows Julia Marlowe, in "Queen Fiammetta" (which closed in Boston, never making it to Broadway) }

{Scientific American, December 13, 1902, Special issue on Transportation on Land and Sea}

{Scientific American, December 13, 1902}

These images were uploaded by people who left comments when the "newstand" image appeared on the Shorpy blog.

{Life, Christmas 1902}

{Figaro Illustré, December 1902}

[7] Here are links to the comments left by the two Shorpy readers: The owner of the print: Anonymous Tipster and the person who found the entry in the book, "The Prints of Martin Lewis, A Catalogue Raisonne": LilyPondLane.

watermelon

2011-09-14T13:16:00.000-04:00

As the 19th century melded into the 20th, demeaning images of African Americans were ubiquitous and casual racial slights had become socially acceptable. The inferiority of the race was taken for granted by many people whose skin was not deeply pigmented. In particular, racial jokes and 'humorous' racial images permeated the media.

This was not a new phenomenon. The happy-go-lucky image of "Jim Crow" began to appear in the 1830s. By mid-century, white Americans could see nothing wrong in their affection for depictions of Jim Crow in black-face minstrel shows.[1] It's depressingly appropriate that Jim Crow became a by-word for oppressive legislation and "whites only" policies in the Reconstruction South.[2] The association of African Americans with watermelons parallels the history of Jim Crow.[3] It began in the early 19th century (or before) and grew to become a commonplace in the early 20th. Examples abound. Here's one from an unexpected source: the poet Carl Sandburg writing in 1918:

Does a famous poet eat watermelon?
Excuse me, ask me something easy.
I have seen farmhands with their faces in fried catfish on a Monday morning.
And the Japanese, two-legged like us,
The Japanese bring slices of watermelon into pictures.
The black seeds make oval polka dots on the pink meat.
Why do I always think of niggers and buck-and-wing dancing whenever I see watermelon?[4]

Given all this, it's hardly surprising that in turn-of-the-century New York a publisher of a popular line of picture post cards would decide to trade on the watermelon stereotype. But it might surprise that the image records the facts of poverty as much as it exploits a journalistic cliché. Here's the photo:

{"Bliss" by the Detroit Publishing Co. (1901) from collections in the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress}

The photographer staged the photo to show two common racial themes: love of watermelon and low-life theft. However, his main protagonist, the thief, is clearly enjoying the set-up. His pose and facial expression don't conform to the racist norm: no exaggerated features, no wooly hair, no eye-whites, and nothing "aw-shucks" in his body language. He's a real boy -- an urban youth, not a "boy" in the language racism, but an ordinary kid. The victim of theft is shown in stereotypical pose, but in the context of the scene, the pose seems to be a parody of the stereotype. It's as if the photographer is making fun of the trite and endlessly demeaning watermelon joke.

Here are some closer views.

The boy's ragged clothes and bare feet aren't racial markers; they're typical of New York street urchins regardless of race. The box he's sitting on probably wasn't selected as representative of anything in particular, but it's interesting nonetheless that it formerly contained cast-iron horse "feeders" from the Belmont Stable Supply Co. The Belmont family was then one of New York's wealthiest and horsiest.[5]

The "thief" is clearly enjoying himself and he appears to like the role that the photographer has asked him to play.

The disfiguration on his right leg is a tear in the photo, not a wound. Note the string on his left ankle; it re-appears in another photo shown below.

This prop may be where they put the duck at night. It has enough visual interest to stand on its own as a photo.

The duck isn't a subject of the photo and consequently isn't in focus, but its presence is symbolic. The scene is urban-gritty, with rubble underfoot and nothing growing. The duck suggests hardships endured — life lived at the bottom of the social pyramid, but not hopelessly so.

Here are the other photos in the set.[6]

{"Seben come 'leben" Detroit Publishing Co. (1901) LC collections}

This photo was taken at the same location. The two boys are joined by two others. There's now a rooster in the scene. The dice have come up boxcars.

{"A Quiet game" Detroit Publishing Co. (1901) LC collections}

This photo isn't so obviously related to the other two. We're on the street side of the buildings rather than the yard side. The boys are dressed for work not play. One of them shines shoes for a living. A man observes from the doorway. Notice the remains of watermelon at the bottom step.

{"Shines" Detroit Publishing Co. (1901) LC collections}

At the same location, we now see the shoe-shine boy in work mode. Notice that he does not shine his own shoes (maybe because they're too worn for shining; maybe because polish costs money).

----------

This "Yellow Kid" comic strip (from Pulitzer's New York Journal, Sunday, December 20, 1896) gives an idea of how racial slurs could by casually used by newspaper cartoon characters. Note the text:

Den he broke that nigger's wind, den he closed his peeps
Den de coon laid down an' took two or tree big sleeps.

Den dat goat et all de wool right off dat nigger's nut.
Den he chucked him troo de ropes wit one small dinky butt.

{"Yellow Kid's Great Fight" source: cartoons.osu.edu}

----------

Some sources:
Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University

Chicken & Watermelon Themes

Niggers love watermellons. Check these out !

The Pickaninny Character!!

The Picaninny Caricature

The piccaninny stereotype

Jim Crow laws

What Was Jim Crow?

Talking Race Over a Slice of Watermelon by Keith Woods

Question of the Month: Blacks and Watermelons

Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs by Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers (1918)

The watermelon stereotype, a blog post by Abagond

----------

Notes:

[1] This is the title page from sheet music published in 1847.

{"Jim Crow Jubilee" Lithographer: John H. Bufford, Composer: Augustus Clapp, Title of Composition: History ob de World (Boston, Geo. P. Reed, 1847); source: wikipedia}

[2] "Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-Black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-Black racism. Many Christian ministers and theologians taught that Whites were the Chosen people, Blacks were cursed to be servants, and God supported racial segregation. Craniologists, eugenicists, phrenologists, and Social Darwinists, at every educational level, buttressed the belief that Blacks were innately intellectually and culturally inferior to Whites. Pro-segregation politicians gave eloquent speeches on the great danger of integration: the mongrelization of the White race. Newspaper and magazine writers routinely referred to Blacks as niggers, coons, and darkies; and worse, their articles reinforced anti-Black stereotypes. Even children's games portrayed Blacks as inferior beings (see "From Hostility to Reverence: 100 Years of African-American Imagery in Games"). All major societal institutions reflected and supported the oppression of Blacks." -- What Was Jim Crow?

[3] "Since the earliest days of plantation slavery, the caricature of the dark-skinned black child, his too-red lips stretched to grotesque extremes as they opened to chomp down on watermelon, was a staple of racism's diet. Over time, the watermelon became a symbol of the broader denigration of black people. It became part of the image perpetuated by a white culture bent upon bolstering the myth of superiority by depicting the inferior race as lazy, simple-minded pickaninnies interested only in such mindless pleasures as a slice of sweet watermelon. Like all racial and ethnic stereotypes, this one's destructive properties have, through the decades, stretched far beyond mere insult. It has helped poison self-esteem, pushing some people to avoid doing anything that seemed too 'black,' lest they be lumped into the company of Uncle Remus, Aunt Jemima, or some other relative of racism." -- Talking Race Over a Slice of Watermelon by Keith Woods

This self-explaining watermelon Montage comes from Stereotypes of African Americans: Essays & Images

[4] From Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs by Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers (1918)

[5] I've written about Bemont before. See road coaches, living high, and another coach on 5th.

[6] When a couple of these photos appeared on the Shorpy blog, they elicited some interesting comments. See Bliss: 1901 and Roll Play: 1901.

some children of 1905

2011-08-15T16:50:00.006-04:00

At the turn of the 20th century the Detroit Photographic Company was known for its postcard views of majestic scenery, impressive buildings, and prosperous-looking citizens taking their leisure.[1] It did not do photojournalism, nor, though it made reproductions of famous paintings, did it aim to produce photographs that were themselves works of art. The company made photographs by commission or for retail sale. Except for the titles that appeared on its postcards, the business didn't require that descriptions accompany its photographs and for that reason there's often little more known about a subject than a copyright date, file number, and brief title.

Two classes of people rarely show up in its collections: children and members of the servant class, particularly African-Americans. Photographs of young African-American girls are especially hard to find and that makes this one particularly interesting. It, and the ones that follow, were taken in or about 1905. They come from collections of the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.[2] As you can see, this one's title is Black Tee."

The title is a pun on "black tea." It's weak because, 'though the threesome is black and there is a "tee," there's no connection with the beverage. Black tee now means black t-shirt, but not in 1905. You can't tell where they're located. There's a companion photo, called Golferinos. The two are preceded by shots taken in Florida and followed by ones taken in Virginia and Michigan. The Florida group includes a golf shot taken in DeLand and it's accompanied by a DeLand street scene where the tree shapes are similar to the ones in Black Tee and Golferino, so DeLand's a possible location, but only just.

Here are two details. Photographers working for Detroit Photo used large view cameras on big tripods. I've shown one below. Like studio photographers, they often posed their subjects and it's clear that's what this one has done here. You might think the intention was picturesque, that the mind-set of photographer (and his intended audience) was condescending, and that's likely true, but there's more to this shot than that one fact. The subjects are a bit self-conscious but have not been asked to mug for the camera. I perceive a certain respect in the way they are rendered here.

The remaining photos from 1905 on this page were all taken at Florida locations and show people at leisure. They interest me because they all, somewhat incidentally, show children, and a couple show African-Americans serving the vacationers' needs.

Here's the one showing "Golf at De Land, Fla." Its neighbor, showing deciduous trees, is here.

Details

This one is called "Clock golf at the Royal Palm [Hotel], Miami, Fla."

This detail shows three kids, two in sailor suits, and one even more formally dressed.

The title of this: "They were on their honeymoon."

[between 1900 and 1905]

This detail not only shows the photographer (somewhat ostentatiously) at work, but also a nicely poised young woman in a beach costume that's obviously not meant for the water.

This is called "The Beach, Palm Beach, Fla."

This guy seems to be taking a break from carrying his advertisement around. Notice the bicycles in this and the following details.

This detail shows a boy and girl in sailor outfits and another, younger, child somewhat better clothed for sand play.

Here, another version of the sailor outfit and an enigma: what do they see that we can't?

"In the court of the Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine, Fla."

More sailors ...

And white smocks on younger kids.

And finally, a girl in a dress with a pretty hat.

------

Some sources:

the Detroit Publishing Company Collection

Selected Bibliography on the Detroit Publishing Co.

Detroit Photographic Company

Postcard "The Post Office was the only establishment allowed to print postcards, and it held its monopoly until May 19, 1898, when Congress passed the Private Mailing Card Act which allowed private publishers and printers to produce postcards. Initially, the United States government prohibited private companies from calling their cards "postcards", so they were known as "souvenir cards". These cards had to be labeled "Private Mailing Cards". Although this prohibition was rescinded on December 24, 1901, when private companies could use the word "postcard". Postcards were not allowed to have a divided back and correspondents could only write on the front of the postcard. This was known as the "undivided back" era of postcards. On March 1, 1907 the Post Office allowed private citizens to write on the address side of a postcard. It was on this date that postcards were allowed to have a "divided back"."

----------

Notes:

[1] First known as Detroit Photographic then Detroit Publishing Company. LC's brief history of the company is worth reading: Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

[2] The home page of LC's Prints and Photos Div is here.

Eden Musee

2011-08-14T08:15:00.008-04:00

Following my great-grandfather's landing as a penniless German immigrant, his upward trajectory was a steep one.[1] Within a dozen years of his arrival in New York in 1853 this man, Louis Windmuller, had established himself as merchant and money manager. In the next dozen had become prosperous and well-connected and by the end of the century he had become a prominent reformer, philanthropist, and public-spirited author. He served on corporate boards with the heads of the city's great financiers and businessmen: Vanderbilt, Astor, Sloane, Choate, and Whitney. He developed friendships with the city's reform mayor and other civic activists. Although he was grandson of a famous rabbi, he helped to found and served as vestryman for an Episcopal church.[2]

Windmuller might seem to have been self-made in the classic sense: one who creates a new identity for himself, ascends from poverty, and achieves social recognition. He might. Except that his education in Germany had been excellent (although a reversal in family fortunes did force him to leave school before graduating). Except that he was known for his big heart and open hand, not in the least uncomfortable to be sharing a humble meal with New York's unwashed poor in a soup kitchen.[3] And except that — having married into a family of Old New York patricians — he never gave himself nativist airs. He never stopped being a German-American and his closest friends and associates were other German-Americans, like Carl Schurz, William Steinway, Adolph Sutro, Jacob Schiff, Abraham Jacobi, Henry Villard, Ashbel Fitch, Gustav Schwab, Oswald Ottendorfer, John Roebling, and Charles Hauselt. That many of these men retained a commitment to Judaism while he did not was (so far as I can tell) of no concern to them or him.

He was also known for his devotion to high culture. A self-made man might purchase expensive works of art, but would probably not be accepted as a connoisseur. Windmuller bought art and literature, but not haphazardly. He carefully assembled what was thought to be an excellent collection and he was considered to be enough of an art expert to be named arbiter in a suit by a well-known artist for non-payment of a commission.[4]

There was nothing of the snob in him. His neighbors knew him as a benevolent and kindly man. With his German-born friends, he delighted in the festivities of the Liederkranz singing society (where his cousin Jacob Windmuller often presided) and of the city's German beer halls.[5]

Two views of German beer halls in New York.

{On left: The Atlantic Garden, 1872, from Lights and shadows of New York life, or, The sights and sensations of the great city, by James Dabney McCabe (Philadelphia, National Publishing Co., 1872); on right: A German beer garden in New York City on Sunday evening by Alfred Fredericks, 1859, written on border: Oct. 15, 1859, printed on image: 'The audience is requested not to stand on the chairs & tables', from Harper's weekly: a journal of civilization. (New York : Harper's Weekly Co., 1857-1916); source: NYPL Digital Gallery)}

His association with the Eden Musee shows both the exalted and chummy sides of his engagement with New York's cultural institutions. The Eden Musee was patterned after European wax-works, such as Madame Tussaud's, but it offered considerably more than views of life-like and often grisly wax tableaux. It boasted of a "winter garden" in which daytime patrons could eat and drink while being entertained by European orchestras and where, in the evening, they would see exotic dancers, lady fencers, conjurers, illusionists, and even some of the very first motion picture shows.

The Eden Musee in 1900.

{This photo appears on numerous web sites, including Facebook.}

Opening in 1884, the place quickly became a New York institution that visitors from within the US and abroad put on their "must see" lists, as they did the new Statue of Liberty and other famous sites.[6] From the first it carefully straddled the barriers separating rich from poor, educated from ignorant, and tenement dwellers from householders. Its name was usually given with plebeian lack of accent, Musee (pronounced musey or moosey) not Musée, but the institution had European roots and its stage held European acts. Local newspapers' society reporters frequently mentioned the presence of celebrated, well-connected, and aristocratic personages among the vast numbers who made there way there. It made itself attractive to the thousands of women who were brought to the neighborhood by the presence of large dry goods emporia and the new department stores that were beginning to crop up. Women, often with children in tow, would stop by to snack, listen to Prince Paul Esterhazy's Hungarian Orchestra, and look at the ever-changing wax installations.

It possessed the mysterious Ajeeb, supposedly a chess automaton, but in reality a dummy manipulated by a live chess master.[7] It was known for its floral displays and was the first place in New York where people could see orchids in bloom.[8] As wax-works it resembled predecessors such as the Friedle museum, mentioned in my last post, and Barnum's American Museum (which was successor to Gardiner Baker's American Museum, also mentioned in that post). The number of resources on the Eden Musee is quite large. I've put a few of them in my list of sources.

The Eden Musee was founded by a French syndicate headed by Adolf Wilhelm Kessler, a wealthy German who made his home in Paris.[9] Kessler had made himself useful during the Franco-Prussian war and been made a Count for his services. Most of the early investors and members of the board of directors were German-Americans and Windmuller was one of them. He was elected a director in 1888 and became corporate treasurer in 1890.

{At left: NY Daily Graphic, March 1, 1888; at right: entry in Trow's City Directory of 1890}

The location of the Eden Musee was ideal. At 55 W. 23rd Street, it was close to upper-crust Madison Park with its prestigious hotels, galleries, restaurants, and theaters. It was also close to the 23rd St. station of the 6th Avenue elevated train and other public transit.[10] As you can see from this detail of a 1897 atlas of Manhattan, Stern's very large dry goods store stood across the street, as did a department store which had been reconstructed from theater run by the famous actor, Edwin Booth (brother to the notorious John Wilkes). During the lifespan of the Eden Musee, the Flatiron Building would rise on the triangle of land half a block east at 5th and Broadway. In pictures of the Eden Musee you can sometimes also see the Castro Building, an architectural landmark built in 1893.

{Plate 17: Bounded by W. 36th Street, E. 36th Street, Lexington Avenue, E. 25th Street, Madison Avenue, E. 26th Street, Fifth Avenue, W. 25th Street and Eighth Avenue; source: NYPL Digital Gallery, Atlas of the city of New York, Manhattan Island. From actual surveys and official plans by George W. and Walter S. Bromley. 1897}

The Eden Musee was also near a music hall called Koster & Bial's. Located on the other side of 6th Avenue, at 115 W. 23rd, it had moved farther north by 1897 when the following map was made (and thus is labeled "Trocadero Music Hall" on the map. Koster & Bial's did not aim for family entertainment, but was rather a variety house where men went to smoke, drink, and relax.

In time the fancy hotels, restaurants, galleries, and stores moved north to Broadway and 34th and the theaters moved up to Broadway at 42nd. Places like Koster & Bial's moved with them, but the Musee did not and, having lost its customers, declared bankruptcy in 1915. Things might have turned out differently. Like Koster & Bial's, the Musee was one of the first places New Yorkers could see moving pictures. But it appears the management wasn't interested either in moving north or in becoming a movie palace.

The Eden Musee building was demolished in 1915 and the commercial building that replaced it still stands.[11] Some of the other buildings that were the museum's neighbors are still standing.

You can rotate this Google street view to see the Castro Building (now Huffman Koos Furniture) east of the museum's location at 43 w 23rd and R. J. Horner & Co. (also a furniture store) to the west at 61 w. 23rd. Across the street at 34w. 23rd, the large building that was Stern's is now a Home Depot.[12]

Windmuller was associated with places just off the map. He was a founding member of the Reform Club which was then located at 5th and 27th. He didn't belong to the Marble Church up the way a bit, but his wife was brought up in the Reformed Dutch faith of which it was a component and her siblings were educated at the Reformed Dutch Church Collegiate School. The church is at 29th and 5th, next to Holland House. He was an art collector and knew the owner of Goupil's Gallery, located at 5th and 21st.

This page from an advertising brochure shows the lobby of the musee. You can see that the featured moving picture in the "Passion Play."[13] Most of the figures are wax dummies, including the boy pickpocket and his mark, the erect policeman, and the officious looking gentleman by the poster.

{Lobby at the Eden Musée; source: NYPL Digital Gallery }

{Catalogue of the Eden Musée (Mayer, Merkel & Ottmann, 1884)}

{Pasteur Group, 1886 advertising card of the Eden Musée; source: CUNY.edu}

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Some sources:

A. About the Eden Musee

PASSING OF THE EDEN MUSEE; Picturesque Old Place of Entertainment by James Huneker, New York Times, June 20, 1915

EDEN MUSEE SITE SOLD.; The Museum Will Seek a New Home Near Times Square. New York Times, April 30, 1910. Extract: "The museum was erected about 1882 by a French syndicate, and a few years later it was taken over by the Eden Musée American Company."

NOTES OF THE STAGE., New York Times, July 1, 1894.

EDEN MUSEE FACES BANKRUPTCY COURT, Owners File a Petition for Purposes of Liquidation -- Doors Still Open. LANDMARK OF 23D STREET Northward Movement of Stores and Moving-Picture Craze Hurts Wax Works. New York Times, June 8, 1915

TO COVER SITE OF EDEN MUSEE, New York Times, July 11, 1915

Adolf Wilhelm Kessler

Obituary, Count Kessler, New York Times, May 23, 1895. "A cablegram was received yesterday from Paris, announcing the death in that city, yesterday morning, of Count Kessler, the head of one of the largest importing houses in the world, one of the founders of the Eden Musée in this city, and a large stockholder and Director. The flag was placed at half mast on the Musée, and a meeting of the Directors called for this afternoon, when appropriate action will be taken. Count Kessler's residence was in Paris, but nearly half his time was spent in this country, and he had a large circle of acquaintances in this city. It is supposed he was many times a millionaire. He left for Paris only a few weeks ago, and the particulars of his death have not been received."

The Eden Musee by Harry Buschman. Extract:

I worked at the Eden Musee. A house of waxwork figures frozen forever in moments of agony and ecstasy. The original Eden Musee in midtown Manhattan, (until it burned down) was a major attraction for nearly fifty years. ... Wax figures consist of little more than a head and hands. When you're dealing with an image of Lincoln, the head must look like Lincoln, but the hands can be anyone's; no one cares what Lincoln's hands looked like. The artist must search for someone who has a superficial resemblance to Lincoln, make a facial plaster cast of him and then pour in flesh colored molten wax. From then on it's glass eyes, a wig, stage make-up and costuming fitted on a show window dummy. Other than his hapless victims, no one ever saw Jack-the-Ripper and nobody could pick Lizzie Borden out of a police line-up either.

"The Eden Musee" in A history of the New York stage from the first performance in 1732 to 1901, Vol. 3, by Thomas Allston Brown (Dodd, Mead and company, 1903) "THE EDEN MUSEE -- THE Eden Musee is situated at 55 West Twenty-third Street, north side, between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. Not until the opening of The Eden Musee did New York have a house devoted exclusively to wax-work exhibitions. It was opened March 29, 1884. Caroline Otero, Spanish character dancer, made her American debut here Oct. 1, 1898. Mlle. Valti, an eccentric singer from Paris, made her debut Sept. 24, 1891; De Kolta, a magician, Dec. 22, 1891; M. Delprade, a French illusionist and bird imitator, made his American d^but April 18, 1893. 'A Dresden Shepherdess,' a pantomime, was produced here Dec 24, 1892, by Vance Thompson, music by Aime Lachaume: Pierrot, Mlle. Pilar-Morin."

Eden Musee Wax Museum 1906

The Eden Musée

The Lost Eden Musee -- "The Wonders of the World in Wax", The Mirror of the Stage; Old Eden Musee a Pioneer in Hungarian Bands, Russian Ballet, and Moving Pictures — First Photo-play Produced There. New York Evening Post, August 19, 1922

The Pride of the Eden Musée, The New Yorker, Nov. 30, 1943

Ajeeb (Automaton) at the Eden Musee

The mysterious Ajeeb. Extract: "The mysterious Ajeeb was the pride of the Eden Musée wax museum on West 23rd Street in NYC which opened to the public in 1884. It drew scores of thousands of spectators to its games, which President Grover Cleveland played in 1885, and other opponents for which included Harry Houdini, Theodore Roosevelt and O. Henry."

The Eden Musee by Harry Buschman, The Writers Voice

Silent Film: The Passion Play of Oberammergau, (1898) American, B&W, 2100 feet, directed by Henry C. Vincent, cast: Frank Russell, Frank Gaylor, Fred Strongl; Eden Musée production

Archive for Eden Musee

Richard G. Hollaman, President of the Eden Musée, an article on victorian-cinema.net

Show Time at the Eden Musée by Joseph Atmore

A sampling of some news reports in the New York Times:

September 15, 1884: Sitting Bull and some of the braves of his tribe will be at the Eden Musee throughout the present week.

February 17, 1885: The performance at the Eden Musee, Saturday afternoon, closed with the third act of the "Mountain Queen," in which little Linda Da Costa appeared as the Queen and Julius Witmark as the King. Linda is 10 years old, and Julius not yet 16.

December 7, 1886: The reception given by the Eden Musee last night for the opening concert of Prince Paul Esterhazy's Hungarian Orchestra was attended by a large and fashionable gathering.

October 1, 1887: The New-York Society for the Promotion of Art has arranged a pretty little art gallery in a room admirably adapted to the purpose in the Eden Musee building, over the Musee proper.

October 28, 1887: Once again the Eden Musee blooms like a garden. Palms rear their graceful stems to the ceilings, and the walls are draped with beautiful vines. The central platform is covered with palms and a few choice plants, among them an orchid from the same stem as the famous flower of that variety in the Morgan collection.

October 21, 1888: The concerts at the Eden Musee on Sunday have become a feature of city life and are always largely attended. An excellent programme is provided to-day, in which Erdelyi Nacal and his gypsy orchestra will figure prominently. The Viennese lady fencers continue to astonish the patrons of the Musee with their skill, and the many lesser novelties on exhibition make the establishment a seeming fairyland.

October 13, 1889: A very large crowd went to the Eden Musee last night to see the first performance of some new female fencers and dancers whom the management has just received from Europe.

January 24, 1893: The Eden Musee seems to lose none of its hold on popular favor. On the contrary, the attractions of the pretty little Twenty-third Street resort make new friends for the house each week. Danko Gabor's royal gypsy band at the afternoon concerts, together with the waxworks, draw large crowds of ladies and children.

June 8, 1915: The Eden Musee, which has stood on Twenty-third Street near Sixth Avenue and shown "the wonders of the world in wax" for more than thirty years, has its days numbered, for yesterday the Eden Musee American Company, Which operates it, filed a voluntary petition in bankruptcy.

January 24, 1929: Peter J. Hill, formerly well known as a chess player, who for nine years was the brain of Ajeeb, the automaton chess player in the old Eden Musee on Twenty-third Street, was buried here today, forgotten by his friends of other days, but carried to his grave by friend in St. Francis's Home for Aged Catholics, where he lived for the last year.

B. Other wax-works

Madame Tussaud: And the History of Waxworks by Pamela M. Pilbeam (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006)

Rubens Peale (1784-1865) Extract: "In 1825, Rubens opened his own museum, the New York Museum of Natural History and Science. His museum housed collections of insects and butterflies, stuffed animals (Rubens was also interested in taxidermy), paintings, sculptures, and even a pair of Egyptian mummies. Rubens took his museum very seriously, viewing it as a place for scientific inquiry and examination, and frequently held lectures on various emerging scientific theories. Unfortunately, in the early 1840’s the museum fell into debt, and Rubens was forced to sell his entire collection to P. T. Barnum, circus entrepreneur and owner of the competing American Museum. It seemed that museum-goers wanted freaks of nature rather than just “ordinary” nature, and so, unwilling to condescend to the addition of freaks and curiosities to his displays, Rubens retired from the museum business."

The forgotten museum of Rubens Peale

Rubens Peale. Extract: "He opened his own museum in New York on October 26, 1825, (along with the opening of the Erie Canal). By 1840, Peale would change the name to the New York Museum of Natural History and Science. The Panic of 1837 sent his museum into debt. It competed with the American Museum, of P.T. Barnum. Rubens had to sell his entire collection to Barnum in 1843. He moved to Pottstown, Pennsylvania. In 1837, he retired to his father-in-law, George Patterson's estate near Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, and lived as a country gentleman, at Woodland Farm. He experimented with Mesmerism, and wrote to his brother Rembrandt about it."

Scudder's American Museum

"Scudder's Museum," in Travels through part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819 by John Morison Duncan, Vol 2 (University Press, 1823)

Doesticks on visiting the American Museum

American Museum: SIGHTS AND WONDERS IN NEW YORK

Barnum's American Museum

Barnum's Museum, New York Tribune, June 19, 1850

Barnum on the American Museum, from P.T. Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs, "The American Museum" 1869

P.T. Barnum and the Fire that Destroyed The American Museum

A history of the New York stage from the first performance in 1732 to 1901 by Thomas Allston Brown (Dodd, Mead and company, 1902)

A Word About Museums, The Nation, July 27, 1865.

C. Other sources:

"The Commercial Progress of Gotham," by Louis Windmuller, in The Progress of the Empire State: New York State and City by Charles Arthur Conant (The Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913).

"THE COLLECTION OF LOUIS WINDMULLER, ESQ., OF WOODSIDE, L. I.", in The Collector and Art Critic, Vol. 2, No. 11 (Apr. 1, 1900). Extract: "The collection of paintings resulting from discriminating acquisitions extending over a number of years is like an art history of that period. Mr. Louis Windmuller was collecting his art works during the period when the Dusseldorf and Munich schools were at their height, his own German extraction leaning him favorably to the work of his erstwhile countrymen. The result of his collecting shows some of the more enduring examples of this school, interspersed with a few canvases which bring the needed variety of landscape art among the anecdotal pictures. Thus combined the collection is an interesting one."

"Louis Windmuller" in History of German immigration in the United States and successful German-Americans and their descendants by George von Skal (New York, F.T. & J.C. Smiley, 1908). Extract: "Of his services in behalf of charity his efforts for the benefit of the German Hospital Fair in 1888 deserve especial mention. In connection with this affair Mr. Windmuller arranged a collection of paintings and a souvenir containing autobiographical contributions from the best American and German authors. He is known as an art connoisseur and collector of paintings and books. He was also treasurer of a fund for the erection of a monument to Goethe and vice-president of the Heine Monument Society."

"American Art Notes," by Arthur Barnett, The Scottish art review, Volume 2 (E. Stock, 1889). Extract: "Thomas Moran, better known to our English cousins as an etcher and prolific illustrator in the magazines than as a painter, has brought a suit against the estate of the late Joseph Drexel of a peculiar nature."

Waxworks, a film by Paul Leni, 1924

Weird and wonderful: the dime museum in America by Andrea Stulman Dennett (NYU Press, 1997)

"Louis Windmüller" in Geschichte des Deutschthums von New York von 1848 bis auf die Gegenwart, Theodor Lemke (T. Lemke, 1891) Extract: "Noch ein anderes Unternehmen, das eine der größten Schenswürdigkeiten für alle New York besuchenden Fremden ist, verdanken wir der Initiative des Herrn Windmüller: das Eden Musée in 23. Straße, nahe 5. Avenue, ans dessen gedeihliche Entmictelung er in seiner Stellung als Direktor und Schatzmeister unausgestzt den regsten und fruchtbarsten Antheil genommen hat." Rendered in English, roughly, as: "Yet another company, one of the most enchanting places for all New York visiting foreigners, we owe to the initiative of Mr. Windmüller: the Eden Musée on 23rd Street, near 5th Avenue, to the prosperous development of which he has constantly put in his position as director and treasurer of the liveliest and most fertile portion."

23rd Street in wikipedia

New York Songlines: 23rd Street on songlines.com

Ladies' Mile

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Notes:

[1] A news article written after his death says "He came to this country at the age of 18 with less than $18 in his possession. He started life here as an errand boy in a grocery store at a salary of $4 a week. He rose rapidly in position and accumulated wealth until he became a director of many financial institutions." Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 26, 1914. Late in life my great-grandfather wrote of 18-year old immigrants like himself, on their own in New York: "[starting out] as grocery clerks sleeping under the counter, they devoted themselves assiduously to the details of the business, so that many were soon able to establish themselves on their own account." -- "The Commercial Progress of Gotham," by Louis Windmuller, in The Progress of the Empire State: New York State and City by Charles Arthur Conant (The Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913).

[2] I've written frequently about my great-grandfather's experiences in New York during the second half of the 19th century. The tag "Louis Windmuller" at right takes you to 39 blog posts about him; for example: America's best citizens.

[3] This comes from an article by my great-grandfather called "Reminiscences Of Financial Problems" appearing in The Forum, Vol. 40, (Forum Pub. Co., 1908): "To relieve the poor, many of whom were out of employment during the winter of 1893 to 1894, the writer joined a citizens' committee, formed under auspices of the "Christian Alliance." Members were expected to purchase tickets at the rate of $5 a hundred and distribute them gratis to applicants for charity. Each ticket entitled the bearer to a square meal in the basement of No. 170 Bleecker Street, New York City. As member of this committee the writer frequently convinced himself of the quality and quantity of the food furnished by Mr. Milbury, the agent. After a visit to kitchen and cellar he sat down on stools in line with other hungry men and women, and he enjoyed with them a large bowl of fragrant steaming stew, a chunk of sweet bread and a cup of good coffee. Some of those supplies were furnished gratis, others at extremely low prices; everybody was glad to help, by timely charity, the starving poor to good food."

[4] One newsman said of him that "He is a distinguished art amateur, and possesses a fine collection of paintings and objects d'art" (NY Daily Graphic, March 1, 1888). For a description of his collection, see "THE COLLECTION OF LOUIS WINDMULLER, ESQ., OF WOODSIDE, L. I.", in The Collector and Art Critic, Vol. 2, No. 11 (Apr. 1, 1900). On his service as arbiter see the description of the suit by Thomas Moran in "American Art Notes," by Arthur Barnett, The Scottish art review, Volume 2 (E. Stock, 1889).

[5] Liederkranz, dancing, beer gardens: Educated Germans comprised the best element of our population. Conscientious in the performance of their duties during the day, they knew how to enjoy their nights. They sang in the 'Liederkranz,' danced in assembly rooms, and drank in 'gemuthliche Kneipen,' where good beer was available. Besides teaching us harmless pleasures, they spread their taste for art and literature. Amongst their foremost citizens were Carl Schurz, Oswald Ottendorfer, and Charles Hauselt." -- "The Commercial Progress of Gotham," by Louis Windmuller, in The Progress of the Empire State: New York State and City by Charles Arthur Conant (The Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913).

[6] Newspapers told of its attractions for domestic and foreign visitors in the appreciations they produced at the time it closed. See for example

{New York Times, June 8 1915}

Extract: "The Eden Musee presented "wonders of the world in wax" and was the latest idea in amusement from Paris. Up-country visitors and foreigners felt as much obligated to go there as they did to see the Statue of Liberty, which was not unveiled until two years later. It was a pioneer in moving pictures: "The Passion Play" opened in 1898 and ran for nine months. The film was more than 2,000 feet in length, and was considered amazing in the day when about 500 feet was the average. Flower shows were a great feature. The Eden Musee held the first orchid exhibition in 1887. It lost its business when the department stores moved uptown and people flocked to the moving-picture shows."

[7] The New Yorker magazine profiled Ajeeb during the war years: The Pride of the Eden Musée, The New Yorker, Nov. 30, 1943.

{source: Hakes and wikimedia commons}

[8]

{New York Times, November 11, 1884}

[9] Here's the obituary of Count Kessler in the New York Times.

{New York Sun, 23 May 1895. Extract: "Kessler born in Germany, acquired great wealth, put wounded French and German soldiers up in castle during Franco-Prussian War, lived in Paris, spent much time in NY member Lotos Club, lived at Hoffman House [located on 5th Avenue around the corner from the Eden Musee]."}

[10] I've done some blog posts on tony Madison Square, including:

[11] The New York Times gave an artist's impression of the building that replaced the museum:

{TO COVER SITE OF EDEN MUSEE, New York Times, July 11, 1915}

[12] This ad from 1879 shows Stern's when it opened for business in its new 23rd Street store.

{From Harper's bazaar; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

[13] From the New York World, February 1, 1898: "SACRED DRAMA SHOWN BY MEANS OF THE CINEMATOGRAPH — A series of Passion Play pictures is now being presented at the Eden Musee by the cinematograph. The scenes have been reproduced from sketches at the time of the last presentation of the biblical drama given at Oberammergau. The motion pictures were secured from a representation given in this country by actors garbed in the costume drawn from these designs and drilled in the various tableaux. Twenty-three scenes are shown, beginning with the shepherds watching their flocks and ending with the ascension. The best of them were the flight into Egypt, the raising of Lazarus, the crucifixion and the descent from the cross. The exhibition made a decidedly favorable impression and will doubtless be the means of attracting many visitors to this popular place of amusement."

Friedle women

2011-08-03T16:12:00.008-04:00

I've been writing about a place in Queens, NY, called the Kelly Farm or, more often, the Kelly Estate.[1] A dealer in dry goods, John A. Kelly came from a German family whose name had evolved from Köllen and Kölle to Khele and then Kelly.[2] He'd made money from a dry goods store in Charleston, SC, and on moving to New York spent some of it to purchase the farm and its large old mansion-house. He had partners both in running the shop and buying the property and in both cases the partner was a woman: in the first instance his mother and in the second his sister-in-law.[3]

Kelly's contemporaries — that is Americans living in the first half of the nineteenth century — would not have been too very surprised. Although cultural bias and legal practice gave men enormous power in both business and finance, it was not all that uncommon in that time for widows to be business proprietors and to control bank accounts and investments as legatees of their husbands.[4]

These contemporaries were well accustomed to see women working to support themselves and their families. Probably most women in early nineteenth-century New York had an occupation of some sort — something other than, or more likely in addition to, the role of housewife and mother. Farm wives had always worked along side their menfolk and in the towns and cities, many wives worked with husbands in their trades. Before marriage or instead of it, many women took service in middle class households as housekeepers, maids, cooks, and drudges. Whether married, single, or widowed, huge numbers of them took in lodgers and ran boarding houses, did piece-work sewing and spent drudge hours in sweat-shop tenement rooms. They were entertainers, they were whores, and, at the bottom of the economic pyramid, they were hawkers, rag pickers, thieves, and beggars.[5] Most of these busy women were immigrants or first-generation Americans and for them the ideal American household with a wife and mother who spent but did not have to make money was an impossible dream.[6]

John A. Kelly's mother and business partner was Anna Maria Werner, known as Mary. The women of her family seem to have been accustomed to ownership of property. She had been born in 1754 on a farm near Charleston, SC, and, after a long life, died in New York in 1840. The farm was a land grant obtained in 1753 by her grandmother.[7] When her father, John Jacob Werner, died in 1783, he left one third of his farm to his wife and two thirds to Mary. Although she had married Kelly's father, John Jacob Kölle, some nine years earlier, it is her name that appears on the will, not his.[8]

John A. Kelly married a woman named Anna Maria Friedle. Like Kelly, she came from a family in which women owned property and engaged in trade.

Early in the nineteenth century, her parents migrated from Germany to the British island of Helgoland. In 1810 or 1811 her father died and her mother brought her two sons and three daughters to New York. A news piece in the New York Times reports that Anna Maria's mother, Maria Catherine, — "having abundant means and an eye to business" — then bought a house in downtown Manhattan and hired young women to make artificial flowers. This business was not an unusual one for a woman to engage in.[9] The Times reporter says "The business grew, until more than 100 girls were employed in the factory, which was afterward built back of the house at 117 William Street."[10]

This page from Longworth's city directory shows Maria Catherine Friedle to have been in the artificial flower business in 1825-26.

{Longworth's American almanack, New-York register, and city directory (New York, Printed and published by David Longworth, 1825-6)}

Maria Catherine probably chose the artificial flowers business not just because it was a culturally acceptable one for women entrepreneurs but also because there was a ready market. Before the disruption of trade caused by the Revolution and Napoleonic wars, Paris had been the main source of artificial flowers in America. When the turmoil of that period came to an end and exports of artificial flowers resumed the French struggled to regain a market share. It took them more than a decade to do this and during that period the Friedle family began to diversify its business both by spreading south (to Charleston) and by starting new enterprises.

One of the new enterprises was a wax-work, or as we would say now, a wax museum. This was another area where women, or at least one famous one, had staked out a claim in business ownership; I'm referring to the still-famous Madame Tussaud whose museum had traveled through Europe early in the nineteenth century and taken root in London in the early 1830s. Maria Catherine would have been attracted to the wax-work business for some of the same reasons she went into artificial flowers. The sculpting of wax figures was akin to manufacture of artificial flowers. Both were French specialties and the flowers that accompanied wax sculptures might be made from fabric as often as from wax. The business would also have seemed attractive since the exhibitions of wax figures in Europe (not just Madame Tussaud's) were known to be extremely popular.[11] Yet another factor in the family's decision would very likely have been the success of Gardiner Baker's American Museum and Wax-Work just a few blocks from their home. Baker's large and heterogeneous collection included such wax figures as "The American Devine, the Philosopher, the Statesman, the Hero, the Venerable, the Artist, the Beautiful, and the Ugly."

{Museum & wax-work, at the Exchange, New York, the American Museum (New York, N.Y.: Established 1790). This 1793 broadside advertises the many attractions at Gardiner Baker's American Museum in New York City. Source: Mass. Hist. Soc.}

In about 1816 the Friedle family hired Italian artisans who made for them a set of tableaux that were quite similar to Baker's and — as you can see from this ad which they placed in the Evening Post of July 1, 1817 — they invited New Yorkers to come see their new wax-work.

{Advertisement in the Evening Post, July 1, 1817}

Soon afterwards the proprietor named in this ad — Maria Catherine's younger son, John A. Friedle — took a collection of wax figures to Charleston. One account says the pieces he took were all religious subjects. This directory listing shows him to have been there in 1822.

{Entry in a Charleston City Directory for 1822 showing the wax museum}

A small static collection of wax figures could not count on sustained patronage in a relatively small city like Charleston. Depictions of Jael, wife of Heber and slayer of Sisera; Hagar and Ishmael; Herod slaying the Children; and John the Baptist Beheaded might fascinate those who beheld them, but the number of those willing to put out cash in order to see them would quickly dwindle. Thus it's not surprising that John A. soon moved his collection to another locale, although it does surprise that he chose Cuba for his destination. This proved to be a mistake as he came down with yellow fever, had to sell the collection, and died during the voyage home to New York.[13]

Anna Maria had been active in management of the wax museum and had accompanied her brother in the move to Charleston. When he moved the collection to Cuba she set up a millinery shop on King Street. There, she met and married Kelly whose dry goods business was close by.[14]

The dry goods store was at 129 King Street. I don't have an address for the dress shop, but it may have been near the wax-work which was a few blocks south at the intersection of King and Market. This street-view image shows 129 King Street as it is today. Since Charleston has carefully preserved some of its oldest buildings, this could be the same structure in which John A. Kelly and his mother ran their dry goods store.

There was good money to be made in Charleston in the years from 1820 to the commencement of the Civil War. Cotton sales boomed and cotton sellers swarmed around the city's wharves. There's no reason to believe that Anna Maria and John A. did not prosper. Nonetheless, within a few years of their wedding they moved to New York with their two very young children, John Andrew Friedle Kelly (born 1822) and Maria Henrica Kelly (born 1824).

This brings us back to the land transaction I spoke of at the beginning of this post. There's not much to tell. This is how Owen Clough relates the story: "Sometime between 1825 and 1826 John A. Kelly moved to New York City with his wife and 2 children and resided with the Friedle family at 117 William St, Manhattan. In 1826, he purchased 115 acres of land with his sister in law, Catherine B. Buddy, in Newton, Queens from the heirs of the Sackett family. This acquisition was later to become the community of Woodside, Queens."[15] I've looked in vain for information about Anna Maria's sister Catherine. There's almost nothing about her and nothing at all about a marriage with a man named Buddy. Her middle name is given as Barbara and it's a strange coincidence that John A. Kelly had a sister named Catharina Barbara Kelly; but the dates given by a reliable source show her to have died in infancy.[16]

In the years following the move to New York of Anna Maria and her family, her mother, Maria Catherine, continued to run the wax museum. Note that she's listed as proprietor in this advertisement of August 1, 1830.

{Advertisement in the Morning Chronicle, September 12, 1830}

Maria Catherine died in 1833 the same year as her son-in-law John A. Kelly. Her daughter and his wife, Anna Maria, lived until 1882. On her death, this tribute appeared in the local newspaper, written by "a near neighbor." It's tempting to think that my great-grandfather was the author. He was a frequent contributor to the press and he would have known her well. She and he were not just neighbors, but also founding members of the first church built in the village of Woodside, St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal. Along with Maria Catherine's son, John A.F. Kelly, and another neighbor, William Sussdorf, he had put up money for its construction and all three served as vestrymen. The mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of the three men were at least as deeply involved as they in the establishment and running of this church, and Anna Maria was prominent among them.

{Newtown Register, December 7, 1882}

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The Times' story of the Friedles of Woodside is useful though it contains some errors. The reporter probably put it together following a single interview with one or more surviving members of the Friedle and Kelly clans. The reference to the sensational Guldensuppe murder might serve as a warning that the piece is intended to amuse as much as to enlighten.[17] One of the strangest errors is the reference to the Friedle family as "Freedles." Others include strange chronology (For example, Rubens Peale opened his museum in October 1825 and couldn't thus have provided a model for the Friedle museum which was in operation in 1817, and the Friedle collection wasn't moved to Cuba by "Mariah Freedle's" brother but by her son and not when the New York museum faltered but long before). Still, it's a useful account, so long as it's not taken for gospel.

{Pioneers of Woodside, Story of the Early Residents of the Lately Famous Long Island Village. MARKS OF GERMAN INFLUENCE; Story of the Freedle Family from the Time of the Napoleonic Wars -- The Rikers, Kellys, and Howells on the Old Farm. New York Times, August 1, 1897}

{Obituary: John A.F. Kelly, Newtown Register, May 13, 1897}

This print shows, generally, what Charleston's King Street looked like when the Kelly dry goods store, and the Friedle millinery and wax-work, were present.

{Old print showing King St. from Prints and Impressions of Charleston}

This aerial view from many decades later gives a general feel for the place.

{Aerial view of Charleston, ca. 1900 from Charleston, the place and the people by Harriott Horry Ravenel (The Macmillan Company, 1906)}

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Some sources:

The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York by Owen Clough

The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate by Owen Clough

John A. Kelly on familysearch.org (by Owen Clough)

John A. Kelly on rootsweb (by Ann Corum)

John Kelly Family by members of the Dutch Fork Chapter, South Carolina Genealogical Society

John Werner Family by members of the Dutch Fork Chapter, South Carolina Genealogical Society

Kelly/Werner/Keckeley/Wharton/Martin families of Charleston, SC on rootsweb

Death of Caleb Tappen Howell, New York Times, December 10, 1911. Services at St. Paul's.

Caleb Tappan Howell, Sr on findagrave.com, by Owen Clough

Caleb Tappan Howell, Jr on findagrave.com, by Steven Howell

Anna Maria Friedle Howell, on findagrave.com, created by: Owen Clough, Mar 23, 2008

John Andrew Friedle Kelly on findagrave.com, by Owen Clough

Anna Maria Kelly Crandall by Owen Clough

Pioneers of Woodside, Story of the Early Residents of the Lately Famous Long Island Village. MARKS OF GERMAN INFLUENCE; Story of the Freedle Family from the Time of the Napoleonic Wars -- The Rikers, Kellys, and Howells on the Old Farm. New York Times, August 1, 1897

freedlefarm a family blog

Waxworks: a cultural obsession by Michelle E. Bloom (U of Minnesota Press, 2003)

Madame Tussauds

The New York City directory (John Doggett, 1842) Lists as many women as men in the artificial flower trade: Mary Brehaut, Hannah Fowler, Mary D. Hammond, Mary Hawk, Ann E. Stuart, and, interestingly, Mary Ann Kelly at 173 William St.

St. Paul Episcopal Church. Extract: "St. Paul Protestant Episcopal Church was founded in 1874, and was the first church in the village of Woodside. That same year, a Carpenter Gothic building was erected with Gothic stained glass windows, overhanging eaves, vertical siding, and multicolored roof tiles. On December 26, 2007, the church was destroyed by fire."

"Peale's Museum" in The traveller's guide through the middle and northern states and the provinces of Canada by Gideon Miner Davison (G.M. Davison, 1837)

Reminiscences of Charleston, lately published in the Charleston Courier by Charles Fraser (J. Russell, 1854)

Charleston, South Carolina city directories: for the years 1816, 1819, 1822, 1825, and 1829 by James William Hagy (Genealogical Publishing Com, 1996)

Charleston, the place and the people by Harriott Horry Ravenel (The Macmillan Company, 1906)

Longworth's American almanack, New-York register, and city directory (New York, Printed and published by David Longworth, 1825-6)

"The Commercial Progress of Gotham" by Louis Windmuller in The Progress of the Empire State: New York State and City by Charles Arthur Conant (The Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913)

Women at Work

Women's Rights

Unexceptional women: female proprietors in mid-nineteenth-century Albany, New York, 1830–1885 by Susan Ingalls Lewis (Ohio State University, 2009) (pdf) Extract: "Significant evidence that nineteenth-century women entered business, ranging from broad economic analyses to research on Irish immigrants to local histories, appeared to have little impact on nineteenth-century women’s, labor, or business history. Even those few studies that acknowledged the presence of female proprietors in this period argued that women entered business rarely, went in-and-out quickly, very seldom met with success according to standard masculine notions of success, and were limited to a few uniquely 'feminine' enterprises. ... We most often imagine and study nineteenth-century women in the United States in domestic roles within the middle class, as struggling working-class women, or as feminists in their quest for citizens’ rights. Yet tens of thousands of women (or perhaps hundreds of thousands) across the country engaged in endeavors that fit into none of these categories;.. they ran their own businesses and supported themselves (and often their families) from the profits. In fact, businesswomen abounded in the nineteenth-century United States." ... "These dry goods, notions, and variety dealers, these makers of hair jewelry, lace, fringes and tassels were rarely risk-taking capitalists but were far more often “self-employed” artisans, shopkeepers, and petty manufacturers. Most labored as well as supervised, and minded the store as well as ordered the goods... women used business as a method of self-employment and survival, as a means of family support and mobility, and as a strategy for immigrant assimilation into an urban economy and middle-class lifestyle."

Gendered Concerns: Thoughts on the History of Business and the History of Women by Wendy Gamber Indiana University (pdf)

Selected Bibliography: Women in Business

Women in Business in the Encyclopedia of Business

Making a Di erence: Women and Business History (pdf) Angel Kwolek-Folland. Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in the United States (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998) reviewed by Mary A. Yeager (Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles), published on H-Business (April, 1999)

The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood a component of professor Catherine Lavender's course, History and Women's Studies 386--Women in New York City, City University of New York.

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Notes:

[1] Earlier posts on this topic are here, here, and here.

[2] I give further details in a blog post from late June.

[3] The authors of the Dutch Fork Chapter, South Carolina Genealogical Society, say that "John A. Kelly ran a dry goods store with his mother at 129 King St. before moving to New York." This information is also given by a Kelly descendant, Owen Clough. In general, the work of Owen Clough has been the most helpful source of information about the people named in this blog post. You'll see his name frequently in the little bibliography that precedes these notes.

[4] Unexceptional women: female proprietors in mid-nineteenth-century Albany, New York, 1830–1885 by Susan Ingalls Lewis (Ohio State University, 2009)

[5] I've written about the bottom of the economic pyramid a couple of times. See for example: some residents of Five Points. Regarding the hawkers, for example, my great-grandfather said this in an article reminiscing about city commerce in the latter part of the 19th century: "We went through Barclay Street formerly over the Hoboken ferry, to the Elysian Fields and encountered squaws who came to sell moccasins they embroidered in their camp on Union Hill." -- "The Commercial Progress of Gotham" by Louis Windmuller in The Progress of the Empire State: New York State and City by Charles Arthur Conant (The Progress of the Empire State Company, 1913)

[6] domesticity: The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood a component of professor Catherine Lavender's course, History and Women's Studies 386--Women in New York City, City University of New York.

[7] The grandmother Margaretha Riesch Werner was then a widow her grandfather having died soon after the family's emigration from Germany. -- John Werner Family by members of the Dutch Fork Chapter, South Carolina Genealogical Society

[8] "Johannes Werner (Weaver) of Erpfingen, Germany, married October 1717, Margaretha Riesch, daughter of Andreas Riesch and Anna Maria Letsche. The family came to SC in 1752 on the Elizabeth. Johannes Werner did not survive to petition for bounty in SC. Margarita Werner petitioned 9 March 1753 for 100 acre bounty for herself and daughter, Barbara, age 22... [Their grand-daughter,] A. Maria Werner, died about 1840, married 23 January 1774, Johannes Kölle, born 8 October 1746, died 1791 (baker) son of John Jacob Kölle. They lived on King St. in Charleston, SC." -- Kelly/Werner/Keckeley/Martin/Wharton SC families on rootsweb

[9] City directories of the time list about as many women in the artificial flowers business as men.

[10] Pioneers of Woodside, New York Times, August 1, 1897

[11] Waxworks: a cultural obsession by Michelle E. Bloom (U of Minnesota Press, 2003)

[12] The brother and sister moved to Charleston before 1821, but I don't know the exact year. Nor do I know when it was that she set up the millinery shop. Owen Clough says: "Anna Maria set up a millinery shop on King St. where she presumably met her future husband, John A. Kelly... Anna Maria Friedle married John A. Kelly on March 8, 1821." -- The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York

[13] Friedle "took the collection to Havana and established it for the moral entertainment of the Cubans. Within a year after his arrival in Havana Freedle [sic.] was obliged to sell the museum on account of the unhealthy climate of his new home. He died at sea of yellow fever on the return voyage to New York. When his boxes arrived they had been rifled of everything of value, including the proceeds of the sale of the wax figures." -- Pioneers of Woodside, New York Times, August 1, 1897

[14] Some of this is conjectural. Owen Clough says "At some point, probably due to the sale of the artificial flowers to the southern market, Anna Maria Friedle and her brother, John Andreas Friedle moved to Charleston, S.C. Anna Maria set up a millinery shop on King St. where she presumably met her future husband, John A. Kelly. John Andreas Friedle established a wax museum, similar to the one that he had started in New York City. The museum was well received according to reviews of the day. He ultimately closed the museum and took the show to Cuba. The venture proved unsuccessful and he died on the trip home. Anna Maria Friedle married John A. Kelly on March 8, 1821." -- The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York by Owen Clough

[15] Same source.

[16] Catharina Barbara Kelly, born 27 January 1780, died 22 July 1781. -- John Kelly Family, Dutch Fork Chapter, South Carolina Genealogical Society, Inc.

[17] I've described the murder on another occasion.

Sacketts

2011-07-24T20:28:00.007-04:00

I've been writing about three properties in the part of Newtown, Queens, which, in the 1860s, became the village of Woodside.[1] Gustav Sussman and my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller, built their homes on two of them. John A. Kelly bought the third. His was much more extensive and already had a mansion on it — the century-old home of the Sackett family.

Sacketts had inhabited that part of Long Island since 1662 when Captain Joseph Sackett (1656-1719) moved to Newtown with his maternal grandfather. The Captain's son, Judge Joseph Sackett (1680-1755), amassed a fortune in land both on Long Island and in Orange County, west of the Hudson. The Judge's brother, John (1688-1728), and John's son, William (1727-1802), farmed the part of Judge Joseph's holdings which would later become the Kelly estate. William's son, Captain John Sackett (1755-1819) inherited the property from his father and it was from the estate of this John Sackett that the land and mansion passed into the hands of John A. Kelly.[2]

The Sacketts were a large family. Over the decades from their mid-17th-century arrival in Massachusetts, they spread into the surrounding counties in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. The male heads of family became farmers, merchants, physicians, soldiers, magistrates, lawyers, masons, judges, ministers, and dealers in land. Those who settled within Newtown married the daughters and sons of other prominent families including the Leverichs, Fields, Lawrences, Moores, Alsops, Hazards, Kissams, and Bettses. In religion they were mostly Presbyterian or Anglican.

During the French and Indian Wars of 1754 to 1763, William Sackett and other Newtown residents Sacketts boarded French officers who had been captured and given liberty to move about "on parole."

Like other Queens residents, Sacketts found themselves on both sides of the rebellion against British rule. There was a William Sackett of Newtown, born in 1696, who was an officer in the Continental Army, while his nephew, our William Sackett — the one who farmed the Newtown property — was a Loyalist.[3] James Riker says that during the summer of 1776 when the Continental Army was forced to retreat from Long Island, the rebel property owners were plundered by Loyalists and British soldiers. Many neighbors of the elder William were imprisoned and had their property confiscated. William himself was put under arrest in a place called the "corner house" in Newtown, but "contriving to make the guard drunk, he slipt away, and was not again called upon."[4]

The Sacketts, like other Newtown residents, had family ties to the family of my great-grandmother, Annie Lefman Windmuller. Samuel Sackett was a cousin of the John Sackett, born 1755, who farmed in Newtown. Samuel lived nearby in Brooklyn where he married Elizabeth Kissam. Her family and the family of Annie's mother, Sarah Lenington Thorne, are interlinked in a couple of generations. I've written about this in an earlier blog post called Kissams.

Not long after it had been torn down a contemporary described the Sackett Mansion:

The mansion faced south at the foot Betts Ave. (today’s 58th St.) and along the old east-west Hurl Gate Road from Hallett’s Cove to Newtown village (today’s Woodside). The position of the mansion on the main highway gave it a commanding influence in eyes of military men. The mansion was the elite of colonial days, noted for its beauty and quaint old architecture. Surround the mansion were picturesque stretches of woodlawn, large cider houses, and sheep folds. The front door had 2 sections with a grand brass knocker, leading to the front hall that was 12 feet wide. The grand parlor on the right had was 17 feet each way, and on each side of the fireplace were two glass cases built in to the side walls, each on enclosed by an imitation gigantic sea scallop shell. The back room had a corner fireplace surmounted with closets. There were rooms on the other side of the hall and beyond them the kitchen with a spacious fireplace. There was a well in front of the house and in back a barn and a cider house. Nearby was a cemetery for slaves. The Sackett cider press was famous throughout Newtown where the Newtown pippin apples were abundant.
-- The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate by Owen Clough who got it from "Old Newtown – Selections for the scrapbook originally written by the town clerk, William O’Gorman (1887)."

{Sackett, also known as Kelly, Mansion at the foot of Betts Ave.; source: Queens Borough Hall via longislandgenealogy.com}

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Some sources:

The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York, containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns ; also, a particular account of numerous Long island families now spread over this and various other states of the union, by James Riker (D. Fanshaw, 1852)

The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York by Owen Clough

The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate by Owen Clough

The Sacketts of America, their ancestors and descendants, 1630-1907 by Charles H. Weygant, Vol 2 (Newburgh, N.Y. Journal print, 1907)

Biographical sketches of loyalists of the American Revolution by Lorenzo Sabine (Little, Brown, 1864)

The Sackett Family Association

The Sacketts of America on rootsweb

Descendants of Thomas Sackett on rootsweb

HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

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Notes:

[1] Click the Woodside label at right to see these posts. Here are links to the two most recent of them:

[2] (a) Captain Joseph Sackett: "Joseph Sackett, son of Simon 2d, was b. at Springfield, Feb. 23, 1656. Left fatherless at a tender age, it is probable he was taken into the family of his grandfather Bloomfield, and accompanied the latter on his removal to Newtown in 1662. However, Sackett was here in 1674, and for many years enjoyed a prominent standing in the town. By his own exertions and favor shown him by his bachelor uncle, Daniel Bloomfield, he accumulated a large estate in Newtown and elsewhere." -- Sackett Family Association

(b) Capt. Joseph's son, Judge Joseph Sackett: "Judge Joseph Sackett was a man of probity, a Justice of the Peace and a Judge from 1749 to his death, Sept. 26, 1755, and it may be added that he was an office holder in the Presbyterian Church, took an active part in public affairs, and was ever held in high esteem by his townsmen." -- Sackett Family Association. In his will he left his son William "all my lands and Meadows in Newtown ... viz - My Mansion house and all the buildings and lot of ground they stand on, and all my lands on the east and south sides of the road that leadeth from Newtown to New York ferry ...." -- Sacketts of America

(c) Judge Joseph's brother, John Sackett (1688-1728): "John Sackett of Newtown, L. I., was married, Jan. 11, 1719, To Elisabeth Field, after whose death he was married to her sister, Susanna Field. They were the daughters of Elnathan Field, son of Robert Field, of Newtown, who was the son of Robert Field, a patentee of Flushing, L. I." -- Sacketts Of America. In his will he wrote: "I leave to my son William, all my lands and meadows, unless the child my wife now goes with shall be a son, in which case my lands are to be divided among them, allowing the buildings to the elder. If the child be a daughter, my son William shall pay her £60, when he is 21. If my son William dies without issue then I leave all my estate to my two daughters (not named). I make my two brothers, Joseph Moore and William Sackett, executors." -- Sackett on rootsweb

(d) John Sackett's son, William Sackett (1727-1802), "married, Feb. 14, 1749, Anne Lawrence, daughter of Capt. John Lawrence and his wife Patience Sackett. Mr. Sackett was by occupation a farmer and lived and died on the farm at Newtown on which he was born. (This William Sackett seems to have been a pronounced Loyalist, and if so, is unquestionably the William Sackett of Queens County, who acknowledged allegiance to King George in 1776, and is mentioned by Sabine as an addresser of Lt. Col. Sterling in 1779.)" -- Sackett on rootsweb

(e) William Sackett's son, Capt. John Sackett (1755-1819): "Mr. Sackett was a Revolutionary soldier. He served in the ranks of Col. John Harper's Levies and in other commands. After the war he took an active part in reorganization of the Militia, and in 1798 was commissioned First Lieutenant of Capt. Remson's Company of the Queens County Regiment, and served as such until 1793, when he succeeded Capt. Remson and commanded his company until 1804." -- Sackett Family Association

(f) Capt. John Sackett (1755-1819), son of William and Anna, m. Elizabeth Gibbs, of Conn., and remained in Newtown, where he d. May 12, 1819, in his 64th yr., and his widow, a. 71, May 27, 1836. Their ch. were William, b. Feb. 28, 1784, m. Gertrude, dau. of John Meserole, and d. Feb. 4, 1849; Lawrence, b. Sep. 14, 1786; Anna, b. Feb. 24, 1791, m. Peter Goreline ; Mary, b. Apr. 28, 1793, the widow of Jos. Lawrence; Patience, b. July 21, 1795; Elizabeth G., b. Dec. 18, 1799, and Amy L., b. Jan. 6, 1804. The last three d. single. -- Sackett Family Association

[3] Actually their fathers were cousins so they were technically second cousins or cousins once removed (I forget which is right). The author of a page on William Sackett found on rootsweb says "William Sackett was by occupation a farmer and lived and died on the farm at Newtown on which he was born. (This William Sackett seems to have been a pronounced Loyalist, and if so, is unquestionably the William Sackett of Queens County, who acknowledged allegiance to King George in 1776, and is mentioned by Sabine as an addresser of Lt. Col. Sterling in 1779.)"

[4] The "corner house" was an inn belonging to Samuel Fish. My source is The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York, containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns ; also, a particular account of numerous Long island families now spread over this and various other states of the union, by James Riker (D. Fanshaw, 1852)

three country homes

2011-06-27T08:34:00.001-04:00

I've been writing about the country homes in the village of Woodside, Queens, that were owned by three New York merchants — John A. Kelly, Gustav Sussdorf, and my great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller.[1] The village was an unnamed section of Newtown when the first and second bought their properties and it was just coming into existence when the last bought in. The area was rural and land comparatively cheap. Queens existed as a county from the late seventeenth century but would not become a borough of the City of New York until the end of the nineteenth and residents often gave their address as "Woodside, Long Island" rather than "Woodside, Queens, New York." Most of these residents grew things which they sold in City markets: vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy products, and — Woodside specialties — flowers and cider.[2]

The area's first settlers were Indian tribes. Willingly or not they made room first for the Dutch, then English. Others joined the mix including, particularly, German and Irish immigrants, both seeking to escape hardships at home and both succeeding in influencing the character of the area. Broad generalizations can be invidious, but it's probably accurate to say the Irish endured a longer and more difficult transition from extreme poverty to a relative degree of prosperity than did the Germans. Historians account for this by saying that agricultural conditions at home, mainly the potato famine, resulted in a high proportion of subsistence peasants among Irish immigrants while the conditions that induced Germans to emigrate included not just poverty but also political turmoil and the Prussian policy of forced military service. Germans in consequence tended to be considerably better educated and to possess skills in useful occupations.[3]

As I said, John A. Kelly was the first of the three to buy property in the hamlet that would later become Woodside. In 1826 he and his sister-in-law bought a mansion located at a central cross road of the community along with 155 acres of land and two roads.[4] In 1859 Gustav Sussdorf moved to New York and soon thereafter bought his land and built his house. Windmuller built his place in 1867.

Despite his Celtic surname, John A. Kelly was, like Windmuller and Sussdorf, a German-American citizen.[5] Kelly and Sussdorf probably knew each other: before coming to New York both had been successful dry goods merchants in Charleston, South Carolina. Kelly died in 1833, before Windmuller was born.[6]. Because they were neighbors, Windmuller would have known Sussdorf, but the difference in their ages probably insured that they did not have an intimate friendship. Windmuller did definitely know the sons and daughters of both men.[7] In fact the Kelly, Sussdorf, and Windmuller families were not just neighbors but were closely linked with each other by their association with the local Episcopal church. The church grew out of gatherings that had been held at the Sussdorf home beginning in 1870 when the wife and daughters of Gustav Sussdorf's son, William, held Sunday school classes for local children. John A. Kelly's son, John A.F. Kelly, and Louis Windmuller joined with other locals to found the church and construct a building to house it. When it opened in 1874 there were 20 parishioners and 50 Sunday-school pupils.[8]

I've marked this property map of 1852 to give the approximate locations of the Kelly (green), Sussdorf (red), and Windmuller (blue) estates in the part of Newtown that would later become Woodside. Windmuller originally owned the small area closest to the Kelly Mansion, but it was taken for a public school after Woodside had grown too large for the one it had been using.[9]

{Detail from: Map of Newtown, Long Island, designed to exhibit the localities referred to in the "Annals of Newtown"; compiled by J. Riker, Jr., 1852, from The annals of Newtown, in Queens County, New York, by James Riker, Jr.; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

As you can see from this atlas sheet of 1912, land use changed a great deal over the next half century. On it I've shown the Windmuller (blue) and Sussdorf (red) estates. The Kellys had sold their land to a developer and moved out of the mansion at the head of Betts Road. The house was torn down to make way for St. Sebastian Catholic Church (green).

{Queens, Vol. 2, Double Page Plate No. 15; Part of Ward Two Woodside; (1908 updated to 1912) Map bounded by Kelly Ave., Woodside Ave., Greenpoint Ave., Thomson Ave.; Including Astoria Road (Highway to Calvary Cemetery) (Celtic Ave.), Middleburg Ave., Jackson Ave., Solon St., Mecke St.; Atlases of New York city. / Atlas of the borough of Queens, city of New York: based upon official plans and maps on file in the various city offices; supplemented by careful field measurements and personal observations / by and under the supervision of Hugo Ullitz. / First and second wards: Long Island City and Newtown; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

Here is the key to this atlas.

The atlas sheet is quite detailed. You can see that the Windmuller mansion faces north and has a small wing on its west side. A drive encircles it and goes on to the stable. These observations accord with the tintype in my earlier blog post.

You can see that the Sussdorf Estate, like the Windmuller, has a two and a half story frame house. Both properties have outlying stables, but the Sussdorf one is brick while Windmuller's is frame construction. Sussdorf also has a barn located right on the property line. The buildings of both estates are accessed via drives from the street which runs on their western boundaries. It was called the Calvary Cemetery Road in the late 19th century and Astoria Road in the 1900s. It was replaced by Skillman Avenue in the 1920s.

You can see that Windmuller's property included one lot of 9 acres and two of 1.5 acres each for a total of 12. Sussdorf's was ten and a third acres. If you look at property maps of the 1870s and before you see that Windmuller's land originally included the lot where Public School No. 11 sits on the map of 1812. Apparently, the land was taken under eminent domain to build the school sometime late in the century. A atlas of 1891 shows the school while at atlas of 1873 does not.

Note that Greenpoint Avenue, which makes the eastern boundary of the Sussdorf property, did not exist in 1852.

--------

{"From the Old to the New World" shows German emigrants boarding a steamer in Hamburg, Germany, to come to America. published in Harper’s Weekly, (New York) November 7, 1874}

--------

Some sources:

What Apple Variety is Native to NYC?

LOCAL INTELLIGENCE.; QUEENS COUNTY AGRICULTURAL FAIR, New York Times, September 21, 1862

The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York, containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns ; also, a particular account of numerous Long island families now spread over this and various other states of the union by James Riker (D. Fanshaw, 1852)

HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

"Woodside" by William O'Gorman in HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

Little Germany, Manhattan in wikipedia

Irish and German Immigration

Irish - The Peopling of New York City

Germans - The Peopling of New York City

Demographics of New York City in wikipedia

Woodside, Queens in wikipedia

The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate

About the Susdorf surname

---------

Notes:

[1] The other two blog posts are Hillside Manor, Clara at Hillside Manor, and Kellys, Sussdorfs, and Windmullers in Woodside.

[2] See HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882), The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate and The annals of Newtown, in Queens county, New-York, containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns ; also, a particular account of numerous Long island families now spread over this and various other states of the union by James Riker (D. Fanshaw, 1852)

[3] "Beginning in the 1840s, large numbers of German immigrants entering the United States provided a constant population influx for Little Germany. In the 1850s alone, 800,000 Germans passed through New York. New York City would by 1855 become one of the three cities in the world with the largest population of German speakers, outranked only by Berlin and Vienna.[2] The German immigrants differed from others in that they usually were educated and had marketable skills in crafts. More than half of the era's bakers and cabinet makers were Germans or of German origin, and many Germans also worked in the construction business." -- Little Germany, Manhattan.

[4] The estate dated back to the end of the seventeenth century and its story is an interesting one. See The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate by Owen Clough.

[5] In Germany, the family name had been rendered as variations of Köllen, Köllin, and Kölle. When Johann Jakob Kölle emigrated to South Carolina in 1752, the name was given as Khele and then Kelly. See
THE KÖLLE FAMILY OF BLAUBEUREN GERMANY.

[5] Gustav Sussdorf was listed in a Charleston directory for 1851: "Fancy Goods, 141 Meeting St". He owned more than one property because his name is in the Historic American Buildings Survey against this structure:

{Samuel Seyle Building, also known as the Shroeder/Sussdorf Building, 213 Meeting Street Charleston, SC; Historic American Buildings Survey}

For more on this building see: The buildings of Charleston by Jonathan H. Poston (Historic Charleston Foundation, Univ of South Carolina Press, 1997). This photo shows the 200 block of Meeting Street, near where Kelly had his dry goods business, in the early 1880s:

{source: flickr}

This one shows a restored building in the 100 block today.

{source: flickr}

I've written about the connections between Windmullers and Sussdorfs on another occasion. See helpful neighbors.

[7] The dates of John A. Kelly, Sr., are October 6, 1792, to January 6, 1833. Here is Kelly's obit from the Newtown Register, May 13, 1897:

[8] Despite a fire in 2007 the church still stands. It's St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church and it looks like this

{St. Paul's, Woodside, Queens, NY; source: lostnewyorkcity.blogspot.com}

See "CHURCHES AT WOODSIDE" in HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

[9] Here is the full map from which my marked detail is taken:

Kellys, Sussdorfs, and Windmullers in Woodside

2011-06-14T07:25:00.002-04:00

The other day I showed a tintype of my great-grandfather's home in Woodside, Queens. When he moved his family there in 1867 the village had only two other homes large enough to be considered mansions. One belonged to John A. Kelly, the other to Gustav Sussdorf.

Kelly had bought the house and adjoining 115 acre farm of the Sackett family in 1825 or '26 and thereafter split his time between that place and a residence in Manhattan.[1] In about 1859 Sussdorf had bought a much smaller property nearby and he also split his time between city and country residences.[2] I don't have a photo of Sussdorf's place, but this is was what the Kelly Mansion looked like.

{Kelly Mansion at the foot of Betts Ave.; source: Queens Borough Hall via longislandgenealogy.com}

Woodside's other houses were ancient farmsteads or new small-lot single-family homes. This photo shows one of the old houses. Built about 1732, it belonged to the Leverich family whose ancestors had settled in Newtown in 1662.[3]

{source: Rev. William Leverich - (1603-1677) Progenitor of the Leverich Family in the United States Of America, an Historical Biography}

This photo shows the newer homes. It was taken in 1923 but depicts nonetheless the mixture of open land, woods, and "development" that began to characterize Woodside in the late 1860s and later. It shows the area north of the Kelly Mansion, to the east of Windmuller's and Sussdorf's estates.

{General view - Queens - Roosevelt Avenue - Woodside Avenue. "A general view N.W. from Roosevelt Ave., at its intersection with Woodside Ave., showing a section of Newtown known as Woodside, as seen from the elevated structure of the I.R.T. and B.M.T. subway lines; same running on Roosevelt Ave. at this point. About 1923. Creator: Armbruster, Eugene L., 1865-1943 -- Photographer; source: NYPL Digital Gallery}

This detail lets you see a type of frame house that was common in the area. It also shows that there was much that was "unimproved" about Woodside even in 1923: unpaved roads and in general a rural feeling.

In this detail you can see Hell Gate Bridge (indistinctly) on the horizon at right. The dark horizontal line just below it is the New York Connecting Railroad. The Windmuller and Sussdorf properties are too far off to the left (west) to be in view.

This 1922 map shows the rough location of the Windmuller and Sussdorf properties, the location of the photographer, and the direction the camera lens was pointing.

{source: Library of Congress}

Here's a satellite view covering a smaller area but showing much the same. The Lawrence Virgilio Playground and Doughboy Plaza are both within the City's Windmuller Park. Louis Windmuller had died in 1913 and his wife Annie lived until 1929. When hew will cleared probate after her death, her two children owned the old estate outright. Late in the 1930s they gave some of the land to the City for this park. A few years later they sold the remaining land for construction of apartment buildings. (The Sussdorf property had been sold for apartment buildings in the late teens of the century.)

---------

Some sources:

The annals of Newtown, in Queens County, New York; containing its history from its first settlement, together with many interesting facts concerning the adjacent towns by James Riker (Fanshaw, 1852)

"Old Newtown – Selections for the scrapbook originally written by the town clerk, William O’Gorman" in The History of the Sackett/Kelly/Howell Estate by Owen Clough (taken from the pages of the Newtown Register, 1887, in Queens Borough Public Library, from Woodside Queens; NY a Historical Perspective 1652 – 1994, Catherine Gregory; and from Woodside of Long Ago, The Woodsider, March 1983)

The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York by Owen Clough: Excerpt: "The Kelly surname started out as Kollen, and future generations changed to Kollin, Kolle, and finally to Kelly/Kelley. The family of Johann Jakob Kölle migrated to S.C. in 1752 arriving about the first of December on the Brigantine John and Mary (SC Gazette, issue of 4 Dec 1752)."

REV. WILLIAM LEVERICH - (1603-1677) PROGENITOR OF THE LEVERICH FAMILY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AN HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY

Newtown Frauds--Over a Million Dollars Worth of Property Not on the Assessment Roll, New York Times, December 22, 1870

Old Queens, N.Y., in early photographs by Vincent F. Seyfried and William Asadorian (Courier Dover Publications, 1991)

HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

The buildings of Charleston by Jonathan H. Poston (Historic Charleston Foundation, Univ of South Carolina Press, 1997)

Sohncke Square, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Excerpt: "The surrounding neighborhood of Woodside, called 'Suicide’s Paradise' by the colonials for its harsh environment, was settled in the late 17th century by Joseph Sackett. Between 1830 and 1860, the area grew and became home to mansions owned by John Kelly, William Schroeder, Gustav Sussdorf, and Louis Windmuller, all men from Charleston, South Carolina. Woodside’s moniker comes from a correspondence written by John Andrew Kelly to his son, John A. F. Kelly, entitled 'Letters from Woodside,' inspired by the unending run of trees visible from his writing desk. The younger Kelly, publisher of The Brooklyn Times, printed the letters for the enjoyment of the paper’s readers. Laid out in 1869, Woodside exists today as a patchwork of industrial, commercial and residential areas."

JOHANNES WERNER FAMILY contributed by Carl W. Nichols, Siegbert Frick & Ann Corum

Trow's New York city directory (J. F. Trow., 1859)

If You're Thinking of Living In/Woodside, Queens; A Polyglot Enclave, At First, 'Irishtown', New York Times, 1999

Reside in Woodside Historically rich microcosm of city by Ruth Bashinsky, New York Daily News, October 27, 2002

Directory of the city of Charleston (J.H. Bagget., 1851)

Herman Gustaf Leiding. Excerpt: "Herman Gustaf Leiding was born August 06, 1828 in Germany, and died December 06, 1896 in Charleston, Charleston Co., SC. He married Catherine Jenkins Prentiss on April 06, 1874 in Charleston, Charleston Co., SC, daughter of Rev. William Otis Prentiss and Maria C. Jenkins. Marriage: April 06, 1874, Charleston, Charleston Co., SC."

Directories for the city of Charleston, South Carolina: for the years 1849 (Genealogical Publishing Com, 1998)

The buildings of Charleston: a guide to the city's architecture

The New York Connecting Railroad

-------------

Notes:

[1] Having arrived in Dutch times, the Sacketts were one of the oldest families of Newtown, the place out of which Woodside was carved in the middle of the 19th century. It's irrelevant to my story, but still interesting, that the Sacketts were thus neighbors of Thornes and Kissams, both of them members of my family's ancestral line. You can trace the associations in Riker's Annals of Newtown. Regarding John A. Kelly, see The Founding Families of Woodside, Queens, New York by Owen Clough.

[2] In 1859 Sussdorf sold his fancy goods business and the building that housed it and moved to New York (see The buildings of Charleston by Jonathan H. Poston (Historic Charleston Foundation, Univ of South Carolina Press, 1997)). I don't have the exact date he built his mansion in Woodside, but it was probably within a year or two of then. His second home in Manhattan is listed in an 1859 city directory: (Trow's New York city directory (J. F. Trow., 1859)).

[3] The first Leverich in Newtown was the Rev. William Leverich, an Anglican priest — born 1603, died 1677 — who had emigrated from England in 1633. I've written about the Leverich family before. See Windmuller sits for a portrait, flourishing, ranting quakers, and Newtown families.

Clara at Hillside Manor

2011-06-08T19:19:00.000-04:00

This photo shows my grandmother in the garden of her father's estate, Hillside Manor, in Woodside, Queens, NY. She was Clara Louise Windmuller; he Louis Windmuller. I've written quite a bit about him, but little of her. In the photo her age seems to be between 18 and 28. If she were 25 at the time, then the photo was taken in 1895. Supposing that the dress she's wearing was fashionable — meaning that she didn't wear any old dress for the photo — then the date is probably somewhere in the second half of the 1890s.[1]

{Clara Louise Windmuller with dog in garden, Woodside; source: personal collection}

The photo was cut from a larger one using scissors and then pasted onto a gray sheet of card stock. It is quite small — only 3" x 3.5" — and has deteriorated with age. Enlarging the part that shows Clara reveals few additional details.

Someone wrote on the back of the photo that the dog was named Perry. Clara loved dogs all her life, evidently including this one. Photos with animals were still quite unusual at this time since even in bright light conditions the exposure times had to be a quarter of a second or more and animals could not be counted on to hold still for that long. The photographer evidently relied on a third person to attract Perry's attention in hopes he would poise alertly, as evidently he did, long enough for the exposure.[2]

The photo doesn't show much of the grounds of the Windmuller estate. You can see that Clara stands in a garden surrounded by trees and other plants.

Both "Hillside" and "Woodside" are descriptive names. The Windmuller estate was located on a wooded hill in an area where marshy lowlands alternated with wooded uplands. Woodside was part of Newtown and "Newtown" is not in the normal sense descriptive, having been "new" in 1665 when the Dutch still ruled in New Amsterdam.[3] I've written about Woodside before; see in particular Woodside, Newtown families, and Bragaws.

---------

Notes:

[1] Wikipedia' article on fashions of the 1890s says that dresses like Clara's began to appear in 1892. They had low waists and high necklines and their sleeves had a high, gathered head and were fitted to the lower arm.
These two images show daytime dresses that young misses might wear in the summer.

Of the one on the right, a web site called Victorian 1890s Misses' Summer Dress says: "This young misses' dress dates to the late 1890s and features a fitted bodice with ruching at the neckline and fitted, ruched sleeves with a ruffled cap at the shoulders." (Ruching is another name for gathering or bunching. It was used to make ruffles and flower petals as well as simple gathers.)

Here's an example of a more elaborate garden dress.

{source: sensibility.com}

[2] Compare this formal portrait of Clara which was taken at about the same time as the photo of Clara with Perry. I took the one to its right in 1954 when she was 84 years old. In the latter you can see she's holding a leash. She doted on dogs then as, apparently, she did when young.

[3] HISTORY OF QUEENS COUNTY, with illustrations, Portraits & Sketches of Prominent Families and Individuals (New York: W.W. Munsell & Co.; 1882)

Hillside Manor

2011-06-08T07:35:00.001-04:00

I've written before about my great-grandmother, Hannah Eliza Lefman Windmuller, whom people called Annie. During the warm months of the year, she presided over this large house in Woodside, Queens, NY.

{Tintype of Hillside Manor, home of Louis Windmuller and family; source: personal collection}

My father said this tintype was taken about 1870. He wasn't always accurate in assigning dates to photos, but internal evidence also suggests 1870 as the date. My great-grandfather, Louis Windmuller, moved into this house in 1867. As I've written before, the family had been living on Dean Street in Brooklyn, but moved to Queens at least partly to see whether the country air would improve the health of his second child, Bertha, born in 1866.[1]

The tintype was therefore made no earlier than 1867. Tintypes were supplanted by silver gelatin prints in 1880 so that's (probably) the latest it could have been made. The plantings around the house — which look newly added — suggest an earlier rather than a later date. So does the youthful appearance of Annie, seated on the porch, who was born in 1836 and was thus 34 in 1870.

From the clothes of Annie and the two servants you can tell it's a warm day. The upstairs windows may have been shuttered against the heat, but then you'd expect the downstairs windows to be open, which they're not. Since the downstairs ones are closed with shades mostly drawn, this tintype could be a record of the reopening of the house for the summer season. (The family spent the colder months in an apartment in Manhattan.[2]) The broom in the hands of the woman I take to be the housekeeper might be intended to signify that the house is being prepared for re-occupancy, but it's hard to say; it might be just another late spring day. The lawn has recently been cut. There are flowers growing in large ornamental urns. A trellis has vines in leaf growing up it. It's odd that there are no porch railings nor any chairs, couches, or swings, just one bench.

Annie has something on her lap, maybe a shawl and jacket or other garments? I can't tell. Here's a detail view of her.

The maid standing next to the housekeeper looks small enough to be a child.

You can tell that the ground floor ceilings are high, maybe 18 feet judging by the housekeeper's height. The chimneys indicate that house did not have central heating, as you'd expect. The site seems to be gently sloped and, indeed, the family called the place Hillside Manor.[3]

-------------

Notes:

[1] The change of scene didn't help Bertha who died soon after they moved. See my earlier posts: an obituary and 19 w. 46th St..

[2] Residents of Queens were then dependent on ferry service to cross the East River and that service became unreliable in the cold months. I've previously written about the skinny building at 19 West 46th St. in which the family spent most winters. See 19 w. 46th St. and 19 w. 46th, again.

[3] Quite a few news clippings give Hillside Manor as the name of the estate. For example this one on the celebration of Louis and Annie's Golden Wedding Anniversary:

{New York Sun, November 24, 1909}

you who know nothing of the works of God

2011-05-28T08:58:00.004-04:00

I'm reading a book called How to live, or, a life of Montaigne: in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. Its author, Sarah Bakewell, does a good job of showing the man's life through his written works. She writes about the tower chamber where he thought and wrote and describes the ceiling joists on which he inscribed Biblical and classical quotations that he wanted to keep in mind.

As it happens, there's currently another well-reviewed book that covers much the same ground — When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me? — and its author, Saul Frampton, quotes a few of these Sentences de la «librairie», as the French call them. One of them Frampton renders as "You who do not know how the mind is joined to the body know nothing of the works of God."

This, in its aphoristic certitude, reminds me of the ersatz Carl Jung quote I wrote about the other day ("Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate"). However, unlike the one credited to Jung, the quote Frampton gives us has an exact source. Frampton's comes from Montaigne's Latin: "SICVT IGNORAS QVOMODO ANIMA CONIVNGATVR CORPORI SIC NESCIS OPERA DEI" which in turn comes from a statement in Ecclesiastes.[1] Others have rendered Montaigne's Latin into English somewhat differently than Frampton does, but all the translations have the same sense: if you don't know how the mind (or soul) is joined to (or united with) the body, you know nothing of God's works.[2]

Montaigne, it emerges, was paraphrasing his source. The text he drew upon — eleventh verse, fifth line of Ecclesiastes — is all about fate intervening in the affairs of humankind, of one's inability to read the future, and, specifically in this line, what is present but not visible. It reads, in the Vulgate, "quomodo ignoras quae sit via spiritus et qua ratione conpingantur ossa in ventre praegnatis sic nescis opera Dei qui fabricator est omnium." Even not knowing Latin you can tell this is quite different from Montaigne's joist inscription. We've "spritus" instead of "anima" and a whole extra clause about "ossa" and "ventre praegnais" not to mention a replacement of "sicut" with "quomodo" as the intro word.

As with all Biblical texts, there are plenty of English versions of this passage. The New American Standard Bible gives: "Just as you do not know the path of the wind and how bones are formed in the womb of the pregnant woman, so you do not know the activity of God who makes all things." This is somewhat clunky but also pretty close to Young's Literal Translation: "As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, How -- bones in the womb of the full one, So thou knowest not the work of God who maketh the whole." In contrast, the KJV has "As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all." Word for word, the Hebrew text reads: "who not know how long the path of the wind bones the womb of the pregnant so not know the activity of God who makes all."[3]

We do not know why Montaigne made the change or what it meant to him. Frampton says there was an earlier inscription beneath the one he paraphrased from Ecclesiastes. The earlier one came from Lucretius: "There is no new pleasure to be gained by living longer."[4] Frampton believes that in overwriting Lucretius with Ecclesiastes Montaigne "shifted from the philosophy of death to the philosophy of life; from being not afraid to die to being not afraid to live." Whether literally factual or not, this statement is consistent with Montaigne's shifting viewpoints as viewed through his writings.

I can't find that Frampton or the (very many) other students of Montaigne's writings take up his paraphrasing Ecclesiastes as he does, but I am nonetheless interested in what he's done. I like the way Montaigne has taken a fairly routine statement of God's unknowable majesty (much like the one that God forced on Job about which I've previously written) and twisted it into a somewhat more profound philosophic challenge. The end result is a surprisingly concise statement of religious certitude: there are things, like the interaction of mind and body, about which we know practically nothing and about which, quite likely, we never will know very much. These areas of ignorance are the space occupied by religion in human societies. Using many more words, Spinoza in the 17th century and more than a few thinkers in succeeding centuries have said much the same thing.[5]

So, again, side by side: the Jungian challenge that Jung seems not to have uttered: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate" and the Biblical challenge as poetically reinterpreted by Montaigne: "You who do not know how the mind is joined to the body know nothing of the works of God."

Portrait of Michel de Montaigne, date and artist unknown

{source: wikipedia}

Le Château de Montaigne (ca. 1890). The château burned in 1885 and later restored. The library was damaged by the fire but not destroyed.

{source: wikipedia}

A closer view of the tower.

{source: firstknownwhenlost blog}

Diagram of the ceiling beams.

{source: philo5 blog}

A closer view of part of the beams

{source: citations-latines-et-grecques-gravées-au-plafond-de-la-librairie-de-montaigne-source-cliquez-sur-l-imagepersonae.jimdo.com}

----------------

Some sources:

A Catalog of Montaigne’s Beam Inscriptions

Montaigne avait fait peindre sur les poutres du plafond de sa tour des sentences grecques et latines.

As Sentenças pintadas nas vigas da “librairie” de Montaigne publicadas em 1861 e 1894 (pdf)

The Man Within, Why Montaigne is worth knowing, a review by Liam Julian, in the Weekly Standard, May 30, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 35. The book reviewed is When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That
She Is Not Playing with Me? Montaigne and Being in Touch with Life by Saul Frampton (Pantheon, 2011)

Two Books on Montaigne: review by Nicholas Shakespeare in the Telegraph (UK) February 14 2011, reviewing Frampton and What Do I Know? by Paul Kent (Beautiful Books, 2011)

Biblos.com: Search, Read, Study the Bible in Many Languages also known as ScriptureText.com Multilingual Bible

Montaigne les sentences de sa librairie

When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing with Me?
Saul Frampton (Random House Digital, Inc., 2011)

Montaigne avait fait peindre sur les poutres du plafond de sa tour des sentences grecques et latines.

Studies in Montaigne by Grace Norton (The Macmillan company, 1904)

Ecclesiastes 11:5 on the biblegateway web site

LES SENTENCES - DE MONTAIGNE

Montaigne les sentences de sa librairie

Sentences de la «librairie» par Michel de Montaigne

De rerum natura Titus Lucretius Carus, 97 - 55 a. Chr. n.

Mezentius the Epicurean by Leah Kronenberg (Transactions of the American Philological Association, Volume 135, Number 2, Autumn 2005)

-----

Notes:

[1] Others render this differently. An earlier author, Grace Norton, tells us that the inscription is much obliterated and thus the exact text is thus somewhat in doubt. She renders it as "Quare ignoras quomodo anima conjungitur corpori, nescis opera Dei." -- Studies in Montaigne by Grace Norton (The Macmillan company, 1904)

[2] Here are four other renderings of the Latin into English:

"You who do not know how the soul embraces the body, you know nothing of God's works." -- Montaigne les sentences de sa librairie
"You who know nothing of how the soul marries the body, you therefore know nothing of God's works."
"Since you do not know how the soul is united to the body, you do not know God's work." -- LES SENTENCES
"You who know nothing of how the soul marries the body, you therefore know nothing of God's works."

[3] I like the comparative texts given on the Biblos site, but there are quite a few others to choose from (see ScriptureText.com Multilingual Bible).

[4] Lucretius wrote: "nec nova vivendo procuditur ulla voluptas" which is probably closer to "nor is any new pleasure forged by living" than the translation Frampton gives, but the sense is the same: there's no assured pleasure in prolonging life merely for the sake of living. (See Mezentius the Epicurean by Leah Kronenberg (Transactions of the American Philological Association, Volume 135, Number 2, Autumn 2005)

[5] For Spinoza, the mind is "a certain modification of the divine intelligence" companion to and not separate from the body. He says mind and body are made up of the same elemental substance. They are different aspects of the same being and that being is God. (See for example descartes and spinoza, mind and body: the problem of interaction by Daniel Siksay

of those who do not toil in blindness

2011-05-25T08:04:00.001-04:00

A Facebook friend recently put this in his status box:

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." -Carl Jung

Search the internet and you'll find that the quote appears many places, but nowhere — that I see — with a citation to source. Search jung, consciousness, fate and you'll probably fare no better (as was my experience).[1] If he did make this statement, where and when did he do so?[2]

Looking through his published works I find a transcript from a seminar he gave in 1931. It's participants expressed the sense of the quote without actually voicing it. The subject is a vision (a meditation or self-hypnotic trance) as reported by a woman who had undergone psychological analysis with Jung. Here's an extract. The text gives the vision first, then discussion.

Dr Jung: She sees an old man. She says:
I looked into his eyes and saw therein a great river full of writhing bodies. A few men stood upon the bank and called with a loud voice to the struggling masses in the rushing water. The water cast a few souls upon the bank. Then the men who stood there lifted them up and showed them a star and a sun. This I saw in the eyes of the old man. The old man said: "You have perceived" and he sank into the earth.
What is this intermezzo? Who would the old man be?

Mrs. Crowley: The wise old man.

Dr: Jung: Yes, in this case the animus, but in the disguise of the old man. She looks into his eyes — here is the eye again — meaning that she sees what he sees. This man is of legendary age, I don't know how many centuries old, he is the personification of the collective unconscious which is of immense age and in his eyes she sees with the vision of the collective unconscious: And what is the view the old man has in his eye? What·is this great river full of bodies?

Prof Eaton: The river of time.

Dr Jung: Do you remember the dream of the river of time in one of the former seminars? The bodies are the individual lives, twisting and turning and writhing themselves into a sort of pattern that dissolves and reforms again and again. It is the river of time, of life, in other words. Now why are those men standing on the bank? Why are they not all in that chaotic river?

Mrs Schlegel: Perhaps they are conscious.

Remark: The are individuated.

Dr Jung: Yes, these are the people of detached consciousness, people who are conscious of themselves and of life. And that they call to the struggling masses in the rushing water produces the effect that a few souls are cast upon the bank — they wake up and leave the great river. Then the men who stand there lift them up and show them a star and a sun. What does that mean?

Remark: Consciousness and individual fate.

Dr Jung: Exactly. The star is the individual fate, and the sun means the light of day, and it is also the symbol of the deity. Consciousness of the individual life and of the deity is the idea. Then the old man said, "You have perceived." and disappeared. What has he perceived?

Miss Sergent: The necessity of consciousness, I should say the difference between the people in the water and the people on the bank.

Dr Jung: The interesting fact is that what one gets from that wise old man has always a universal sense — if he is really a positive figure.

Prof Eaton: The old man said "you have perceived," without qualification, which to my mind means that he has perceived all.

Dr Jung: Exactly. What she sees is really a point of view, a Weltanschauung. It is a very simple thought, but of tremendous consequences. She sees the chaos of life, an interminable river of life that rolls on to eternity, making no sense whatever because everything is merely chaotic. Only a few are standing on the bank and are aware of it. And so in our world only a few are standing upon the bank and really understand, see with their eyes what is happening; all the others are just toiling on as blind as ever. The unconscious emphasizes here the extraordinary importance of consciousness, consciousness as a sort of redemption from the eternal wheel of death and rebirth. Like the wheel in Buddhistic philosophy, death and rebirth. the curse of that eternal illusory meaningless existence. In this vision we find the same principle as in Buddhism, the consciousness of what is happening as a redeeming principle. The people standing on the bank are aware of the individual fate, and the relation to the deity, or the star and the sun. Those are the two important principles. Now of what is this vision making our patient aware?

Mrs Crowley: That she is one of those people who are on the bank.

Dr Jung: But he tells her something more important, at least in my humble opinion, it is more important.

Prof Demos: That everything must perish is a very pessimistic fact; but to realize this fact in one's consciousness is somehow to rise above it, to conquer it. To accept the fact that you perish in time is a sort of victory over time, which is perhaps the meaning of tragedy in the drama. This vision is a presentation of the meaning of knowledge — a conquest of fate by accepting fate.

Dr: Jung: Exactly, and that is again the Buddhist idea. So this vision is a sort of reconciliation of herself, or of her point of view, with the great nonsense of the world. It gives her a philosophical explanation; it points out that that river only make sense if a few escape and become conscious, that the purpose of existence is that one should become conscious. Consciousness redeems one from the curse of that eternal flowing on in the river of unconsciousness. This is an exceedingly important idea and is the next parallel to the central Buddhist teaching. Now, mind you, our patient has had no particular education in this respect. This really comes directly out of the kitchen of the unconscious; she is shown in a most impressive way the meaning of human existence.

The seminar took place in Zurich on March 25, 1931. It's reported in Visions: notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934 by C.G. Jung by Carl Gustav Jung, edited by Mary Foote and Claire Douglas (Princeton University Press, 1997).[3] Apart from Jung himself, the speakers are identified on page xxxiv of this book. The book's introduction tells how the seminar came about. Jung did not intend that its transcript be published, and the editor tells us that it was an informal affair, conducted in English (of which Jung was not a native speaker) with participants from varying walks of life who came from England, the U.S., Germany, and Switzerland.

The woman whose vision is being discussed was Christiana Morgan. A book review in the New York Times says she "was a talented, passionate and exceptionally beautiful woman who made a significant contribution to the early development of psychoanalysis. But she died unrecognized and, in the end, unloved." -- A Woman of Visions, a book review by By Ben Macintyre, New York Times, August 22, 1993; the book is Translate This Darkness, the Life of Christiana Morgan. By Claire Douglas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)

Once, back in the seventies, a person I consulted said it's helpful to watch yourself being yourself. I accepted this as wisdom then and still do. I like the way Jung and the seminar participants run with the version of this idea which emerges from the vision.

I also like the way the transcript reminds me of the psychoanalytic excesses of the 1930s and '40s. In that time many people credited Freud's writings with scientific validity, and, with some reservations, Jung's as well. Although now giving us no evidence of what we accept as science, the writings emerge as the works of art that they truly are and, when good, can, as good literature does, allow us to respond to them with deep and rewarding pleasure.

{Christiana Morgan (source: Dalum Hjallese Debatklub) and Carl Jung (source: wikipedia)}

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Some sources:

Visions: notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934 by C.G. Jung by Carl Gustav Jung, edited by Mary Foote and Claire Douglas (Princeton University Press, 1997)

Christiana Morgan on wikipedia

Christina D. Morgan

A Woman of Visions, a book review by By Ben Macintyre, New York Times, August 22, 1993; the book is Translate This Darkness, the Life of Christiana Morgan. By Claire Douglas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)

"Christiana Morgan's Visions Reconsidered: A Look Behind The Visions Seminars" by Claire Douglas, in Library Journal, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Summer 1989), pp. 5-27

"Vying Visions" by Eugene Taylor, reviewing Love's Story Told; A Life of Henry A. Murray by Forrest G. Robinson, and Translate This Darkness: A Life of Christiana Morgan, the Veiled Woman in Jung's Circle by Claire Douglas in
Library Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 43-46

Review by Paul Hannigan of Love's Story Told by Forrest G. Robinson in Harvard Review, No. 4 (Spring, 1993), pp. 214-215

'Whatever is not conscious will be experienced as fate' - Carl Jung

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Note:

[1] The search turns up some variants, such as this: 'Whatever is not conscious will be experienced as fate' - Carl Jung, and a few reports of failure to find sources.

[2] It's reasonably likely that he was never recorded as having used these exact words. The internet is riddled with inexact, distorted, and non-existent "quotes."

[3] I've quoted from this work under fair use provisions of U.S. Copyright Law.