Genealogy

Judge Effingham Lawrence

February 20, 2015 in Lawrence Family 1 Comment Tags: Judge Effingham Lawrence

Effingham Lawrence (1779-1850) was the forth great grandfather of my wife. He was the son of Joseph Lawrence (1741-1813) and Phebe Townsend (1740-1816) and married Anne Townsend (1782-1845) and had seven children.

He was a First Judge of Queens County.

He was mainly a farmer. He owned “The Bayside Farm” and three additional farms. In his early days he was an important breeder of thoroughbred cattle. Judge Lawrence’s books reveal that his interest in breeding Merino sheep led him to correspond with owners of that stock from places as divergent as Canada and the Carolinas, and his account books reveal that he originally spent $2,200 for a ram and two ewes.

He had large flocks of Merinos which were the foundation of flocks in Vermont, Canada, and the Western states. These were said to be the progenitors of “Canadian mutton” sold in the early markets in New York City.

At this time the borough of Queens extended as far as Hempstead. Even though he served several years as a judge of the County Court, Lawrence had the time to research and grow the finest apples, peaches and apricots in our region. Records show he was an early advocate of the liberal use of plant food and fertilizer in those early times.

By 1817 Judge Lawrence was one of the prominent men to initiate the formation of the Agricultural Society of Queens County. Queens then encompassed an area that reached as far as Hempstead. Rufus King of Jamaica was elected the society’s first president and Judge Lawrence served as one of two vice presidents. The stated purpose of the society was “to improve the method of farming and raising of stock and advancing rural economy.” The first meeting was held in the old Mineola courthouse in 1819 and that year the first exhibition was also held.

In July 1841 a Queens County Agricultural Society was formed to supplant the original society and at that time Judge Lawrence was selected as its president. Its first fair was held on Oct. 15, 1842, at Anderson’s Hotel in Hempstead. Before the event, the poet, journalist, and horticulturist William Cullen Bryant composed an ode which was sung at a local church. The number of visitors to these fairs ranged from 6,000 to 20,000 people, attracted as well by the racetrack. Fairs were later held also at Jamaica.

Judge Lawrence was also known as a breeder of fine horses, and in his younger days he participated in the hunt. In season he would pack up his family and set off for a two day trip to Smithtown to visit his relative Richard Smith. The area around Lake Ronkonkoma at that time was ideal for fox and deer.

Stone House

Stone House was built in 1822 by Isaac Stansbury for Judge Lawrence on 49 acres overlooking Little Neck Bay.

Judge Lawrence is buried in the Lawrence Cemetery in Bayside.

Leave a Comment

The Two Lives of Mary Lawrence

February 17, 2015 in Lawrence Family No Comments Tags: Genealogy, Mary lawrence. Mrs. Foxhall Keene, Mrs. Frank Worth

Mary Laurence (1860-1942) was the daughter of Frederick Newbold Lawrence and Elizabeth Boyce. She was my wife’s great grand aunt.

Her life as Mrs. Frank Worth White

Frank, the only son of his parents, graduated from Trinity College, was admitted to the Stock Exchange in April 1881 and went to work for his father at Loomis, White and Co., 40 Wall St.

St. George’s Church, Flushing

On October 3 1878 he married Mary Lawrence in St. George’s Church, Flushing. Their first and only child, Loomis Lawrence White, was born on November 2, 1879.

Tucker Cottage

In 1883 they took Tucker Cottage in Lenox.

In February 1884 Mary was elected to play in the tableau of Helen of Troy at a charity event in Madison Square garden attended by 3000. Selected Beauties from Society played famous roles.

One critic gushed

“She was in every way worthy to represent the lovely Helen.”

Another critic, sharpening her claws, was not entirely sure:

Mrs. Frank Worth comes to nigh as being a professional beauty as anything we have in metropolitan society. She is thin, hollow-chested and bow backed; so that, as Helen or Troy, she presented no heroism of figure: but her face was delicately fine, her eyes wee glorious, and her transparently clear connection was not much obscured by paint.

In March 1886 “mild Lenten forms of dissipation” characterized New York Society. Mrs. John Sherwood held gatherings at her house, where she held forth on “The Vatican and Its Treasures.” Afterwards Society was treated to recitations and songs:

Mrs. Frank Worth White, one of our young married belles, sang “My Marguerite” effectively. Mrs. White wore the first spring suit I have seen this season, which consisted of a gray silk ground, on which were tiny black and white embroidered flowers, The whole effect was of rich grey,. She also wore a tiny bonnet to match, with trimmings of grey velvet. The little strings and bows under the chin are becoming smaller, and are now just a strap.

Such was hot news in the Fort Worth Texas Gazette. I am surprised how papers all over America paid such close attention to the minutiae of the doings of fashionable New York society.

In 1886 Mary was in more tableaux vivants at the ball room of the Metropolitan Opera house to benefit St George’s Seaside House. She appeared in The Sibyl by F. S. Church. I have not been able to find that painting, but these are other paintings by Frederick Stuart Church:

F. S. Church at work

One critic semi-gushed about Mary:

Mrs. Frank Worth is a beauty of the Second Empire. She has been the great rival of Mrs. James Brown Potter, who is one of the handsomest women in the world, but yet she is a red and white “peach-blow” beauty dressed in pale green Nile crepe. She leaned forward, consulting a figure of a sphinx, behind whom burned incense (why?). With her hair half falling from a knot, a wreath of oak leaves and arms bare, she made a beautiful picture of a pretty woman, but it might have been Flora or Euphrosyne, or anybody but a sibyl. She was not a figure to prophesy, but to inspire valentines.

Frank died, at the age of thirty, on January 18, 1887 of pneumonia. He was buried from St. George’s Church where he had been married nine years previously. Mary, at twenty-seven, was a widow with an eight-year old son.

In May 1890 Mary participated in an entertainment at St. Ignatius Club in aid of St. Luke’s hospital

Her life as Mrs. Foxhall Parker Keene

Mary and Foxhall Parker Keene announced their engagement August 1891, when she was thirty-one. Foxie, as he was known, was a dashing sportsman, but apparently an unsatisfactory husband, and his life will be discussed in detail.

They married December 10, 1892 at her house at 19 East 22^nd St.

She accompanied him to sporting events, but they also attended the opera. Her clothing continued to attract attention. At opening night ate Met

She wore a gown of pale-blue velvet, which had a shimmer of silver and was trimmed with silver embroidery on the skirt. The bodice was of rose-colored velvet, and was studded with handsome jewels. Mrs. Keene also wore a tiara of diamonds.

September 1899 found Mary at Newport. There she participated in a charity theatrical put on by the Earl of Yarmouth. It included an operetta, “Creatures of Impulse’.”

During the performance specialties were introduced and among them the Earl gave a whistling solo, danced with Miss Ethel Sigsbee a character dance called “The Moth and the Butterfly,” sand a duet with Miss Hunter, “Doodle Doodle” and again in “No One in the World.” Mrs. Foxhall Keene captivated the audience with a French ballad.

(Creatures of Impulse is a stage play by English dramatist W. S. Gilbert, with music by composer-conductor Alberto Randegger, which Gilbert adapted from his own short story. Both the play and the short story concern an unwanted and ill-tempered old fairy who enchants people to behave in a manner opposite to their natures, with farcical results.)

I would have paid good money to hear an earl doing a whistling solo.

Mary also part pated in a 1904 charity event at Mrs. Clare Mackay’s house, Harbor Hill, in Mineola.

Harbor Hill

Dressed in the costumes of demure Puritan maids, witching French and Alsatian peasant girls, and charming little geishas from Japan, women whose names are household words stood behind counters and offered their wares. Some sold candles, others automobiles; some fancywork, others toys. Still others roamed at large and beguiled delighted victims into taking chances in raffles for objects as diversified as signed photographs of the next President of the United States, or a donkey cart with a beribboned “moke” attached.

Mrs. Mackay was dressed in a nurse’s costume that would have surpassed the happiest dreams of the most exacting patient, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, in the demure grey of a Puritan girl, with a stiffly starched white cap on her head and a white apron with bog baby bows, could hardly take the money fats enough for eth tickets she was selling for a doll’s house. Mts. Willie K Vanderbilt, Jr., sold frills and laces and tucks with all the gentle persuasiveness sof an accomplished “saleslady” in a big department store, and her mild solicitude when purchasers nearly fainted at the prices was something to study. Mrs. Foxhall Keene, in the costume of the court of Louis XVI., asked and got 50 cents for a cup of tea with such a confidential air that the purchasers felt they had made a lifelong friend and forgot to drink it.

Readers in Lincoln, Nebraska learned

Cloth gowns in color are much worn. Mrs. Foxhall Keene is wearing a brightest red cloth with the bolero embroidered all over in lighter red. A narrow band of the embroidery runs all around the bottom of the skirt, which is laid in flat stitched folds to the knee, where the fullness is allowed freedom and the skirt falls gracefully about the feet.

The women of St. Louis were enlightened to learn that

Mrs. Foxhall Keene is radiant in a street suit of aluminum grey trimmed with oyster-grey bands. With is she wears a chinchilla set, consisting of muff, collar and cuffs. Her hat is trimmed with chinchilla.

There are many stories about the origin of Chicken à la King, and many of them sound plausible. It is a dish of diced chicken, mushrooms, green peppers, and pimientos in a cream sherry sauce served on toast. Here are some of the stories. Dates range from 1881 to the 1920s.

Either a Mr. or Mrs. Foxhall Keene suggested it to the chef at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City, and originally served as Chicken à la Keene. This was in the late 1890s.

But alas, all was not chicken a la king and chinchillas. For reasons that were never disclosed, Mary left Foxhall and in 1904 returned to her father. In 1909 she was finally divorced from him on grounds of abandonment. There were hints of financial conflicts (although both were very wealthy) and Mary, like her father, was a vegetarian, but the real reasons for the “incompatibility” were never revealed.

In June 1911 Mary reviewed the working horse parade and there was still some interest in her dress. She

wore a black hat of middle size, but quite high, with loops of black ribbon. Her gown was soft, black satiny stuff, with the upper part of the bodice and the sleeves, in one, of black chiffon cloth, over white, and the sleeves were edged with plain hems of stain, and across the front of the corsage was a plastron of black jet embroidery edged with gold. There was a bit of white around the neck. The skirt, at a fleeting glance, seemed to be quiet simple, and she carried a black wrap, which she donned before leaving the stand.

She faded from the social scene and died in New York in 1942 at the age of eighty two.

Leave a Comment

Frederick Newbold Lawrence

February 16, 2015 in Lawrence Family, Uncategorized 1 Comment Tags: Carlyle Carne, Frederick Newbold Lawrence, Genealogy, Stone House, The Oaks

Frederick Newbold Lawrence (February 28 1834 – December 24, 1916) was my wife’s great great grandfather. He was a son of Edward Newbold Lawrence (1805–1839) and Lydia Ann (née Lawrence) Lawrence (1811–1879). After his father’s death, his mother married her cousin Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence, who served successively as a U.S. Representative, mayor of New York City, and Collector of the Port of New York. From his mother’s second marriage, he had several half-siblings, including Van Wyck Lawrence and James Ogden Lawrence.

He was a descendant of mayor of New York City John Lawrence and John Bowne, both Quakers and pioneer English settlers of Queens. His paternal grandparents were Hannah (née Newbold) Lawrence and merchant John Burling Lawrence,[3] and his maternal grandparents were Anna (née Townsend) Lawrence and Effingham Lawrence.[4] His uncle Effingham Lawrence is known for serving for the shortest term in congressional history, serving for just one day in the U.S. House of Representatives.

He was a Colonel in the Civil War, twice president of the New York Stock Exchange in 1882-1883, and president of the Union Club. In 1882 Frederick Newbold, as president of the Exchange, was called to testify about the expulsion of a broker accused of dishonest dealings. The judge was (who else?) Judge Lawrence – and yes, he was, like all the Lawrences in important positions New York, a relative.

In 1888 President Grover Cleveland visited New York; he was welcomed by Frederick Newbold who eulogized his administration.

A Fast Trotter (Dan Patch)

The sport that Frederick Newbold favored was fast trotting. In May 1900 Carlyle Carne, driven by Col. Fred Lawrence, “the veteran road rider,” beat Cobwebs, driven by Nathan Strauss.

“2,500 or 3,000 pedestrians were on hand, hopeful of witnessing a battle royal between the rival fliers.

Cobwebs wore a pair of knee boots, held in place by blue elastic bands passing over his shoulders, and Carlyle Carne was rigged with white felt ankle and tendon boots forward, with scalpers and shin boots behind.

The New “King of the Speedway” is a flea bitten grey gelding., upward of sixteen hands high. He was foaled in 1891 at Portland Ore. , and was bred by Van B. de Lashmutt. His sire was Hambetonian Mambrino, a son of Menlaus by Rysdyk’s Hambletonian. Carne’s dam was Lady Gray, by Confederate Chief, granddam by General Knox. The horse came out as a three-year old and has been campaigned every year since 1894. Colonel Lawrence bought him last fall for $1,375 [about $40,000 in 2020 dollars].”

( I detect in here a parody of the society page – who was wearing what, ancestors, money.)

In November 1900, Col. Fred, as he was known in sporting circles, did not intend to drive for a while so he sold Carlyle Carne at auction. The buyer was Foxhall Keene, his son-in-law.

Frederick Newbold had a town house at 18 West 53^rd St NY and an apartment at the Croisic. In March 1908 the New York Times reported of Frederick Newbold:

He was ill when he went to the Croisac last Sunday afternoon, and a few minutes after he entered his apartments the elevator boy hear a fall. He investigated and found Mr. Lawrence senseless on the floor with a large cheval looking glass, which had been upset, on top of him. Pneumonia developed and the case was pronounced serious from the first.

He recovered, and his physician credited the recovery to Frederick Newbold’s twenty-year course of vegetarianism. Lawrence died in his townhouse at 57 West 52nd Street, which he had built shortly before his death, on December 24, 1916. He was buried at Lawrence Burying Ground in Bayside.

Frederick Newbold married Elizabeth Boyce (1835-1894) on December 6, 1855 in South Carolina. They had three daughters, Mary, Virginia Lee, and Elizabeth, from whom my wife is descended.

Lillie Lawrence (1857–1920),[ who married Brig. Gen. Charles Hedges McKinstry, an engineer and army officer.[14]
Mary “Tibbie” Lawrence (1859–1942),[ who married stockbroker Frank Worth White (1856–1887) in 1878. After his death, she married Foxhall Parker Keene in 1892. Keene was the son of James Robert Keene, a former president of the San Francisco Stock Exchange. They divorced in 1909.
Elizabeth Lawrence (1862–1906), who married J. Henry Alexandre (1848–1912), a son of Francis Alexandre, in 1887. Alexandre was prominent in steamship circles (the Alexandre Line was bought out by rival Ward Line in 1888).
Virginia Lee Lawrence (1864–1891), who married Lewis Meredith Howland, a son of Edgar Howland of Howland & Aspinwall, in 1883. Samuel M. Roosevelt, Howland’s business partner, was his best man. After her death, Lewis married Leonora von Stosch (they later divorced and Leonora married Sir Edgar Speyer).

His Houses

The Oaks, Queens

Frederick Newbold constructed The Oaks mansion.

He sold it to restaurateur John Taylor in 1859 who transformed it into greenhouses specializing in roses and orchids. It became the Oakland Golf Club 1886.

Oakland Golf Club

Oakland Lake is located in a ravine in Bayside. It was also once called Douglas Pond after a local landowning family. They also developed nearby Douglaston. Oakland took its name from “The Oaks,” estate of Frederick Newbold Lawrence, who also descended from a local colonial settler family.

In 1896, his estate became a golf course, and in turn, it became CUNY’s Queensborough Community College in the 1960s.The lake was is subject to algae and silting and still requires plenty of care to ensure its preservation.

Oakland Lake

This pond can be found at Cloverdale Boulevard and 46th Avenue, one block south of Northern Boulevard.

The neighborhood of Oakland Gardens is named for a private estate called “The Oaks” that once occupied much of the area. John Hicks, one of Flushing’s original patentees, settled the area in 1645 and named his estate after the trees in the region. The estate, which spread from present-day 46th Avenue to the Long Island Expressway, passed through several owners, and in 1859 was bought by John Taylor, a successful restaurateur from Manhattan. Taylor and his partner, John Henderson, transformed The Oaks into a horticultural paradise with more than 30 greenhouses, specializing in roses and orchids. In 1896, John H. Taylor, son of the restaurateur, organized the Oakland Golf Course on 110 acres in the area. Most of the single-family houses and apartment complexes in Oakland Gardens today were constructed during a post-World War II building boom, when the area turned into a thriving suburban neighborhood.

Stone House, Queens

Stone House in Winter

Stone House was built in 1822 by Judge Effingham Lawrence. He left it to his daughter Lydia; when she died in 1879, she left it to her son Frederick Newbold, who expanded it with a dining room to seat 80. It was demolished by developers in 1956.

Leave a Comment

Thomas Burling the Cabinetmaker

February 12, 2015 in Burling, Uncategorized No Comments Tags: Burling chair, Genealogy, George Washington, Thomas Burling, Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Burling (1746-1831) was the son of Ebenezer Burling and Mary Lawrence. He was the first cousin of Effingham Embree the clockmaker, and may have made cabinets for the clocks. He was my wife’s fifth great grand uncle. He married Susanna Carter in 1767 and had numerous children.

He trained as a cabinetmaker under Samuel Prince.

Thomas quickly became known as one of the finest cabinet makers in North America. When the capital of the new United States was located in New York, Congress leased for George Washington the house at 3 Cherry Street, and furnished it, mostly from Thomas’s shop:

With the exception of the upholsterer’s charges, the greatest sum for furnishings was paid to Thomas Burling for “Mahogany Furniture,” which contributed to what Martha Washington called a “handsomely furnished house.” In total, Congress spent eight thousand dollars preparing the executive residence for the Washington family.

George Washington commissioned a special piece of furniture, an “uncommon chair,” from Thomas Burling.

The Burling chair at Mt. Vernon

On April 17, 1790, Washington paid New York cabinetmaker Thomas Burling £7 for this ingeniously-engineered “Uncommon Chair.” It combines the sleek, contemporary design of a French bergère en gondole (or barrel-back upholstered armchair) with a unique swivel mechanism that allows the circular seat to rotate on four bone rollers. Washington must have found the chair to be ergonomically pleasing, as he used it throughout his presidency and for the remainder of his life. Following his return to Mount Vernon in March 1797, he placed it in his study.

Thomas Jefferson liked it, and in 1790, on the same trip he pursed toothbrushes from Effingham Lawrence the druggist, he also had Thomas Burling make a similar chair.

The Burling chair made for Jefferson

The Burling chair in situ at Monticello

While serving as secretary of state in New York in 1790, Jefferson purchased a good deal of furniture from local cabinetmakers, particularly Thomas Burling, who had a shop on Beekman Street. In his Memorandum Book, Jefferson carefully recorded two payments totaling £143 to Burling in July and August 1790 but did not identify his purchases. Among other articles, Jefferson evidently acquired a sofa and a revolving chair.

Jefferson’s chair was mocked by the Federalists:

Although Washington eluded the enmity of the Federalist critic William Loughton Smith, Jefferson did not escape ridicule for his politics and his chair. Smith wrote, “Who has not heard from the Secretary of the praises of his wonderful Whirlgig Chair, which had the miraculous quality of allowing the person seated in it to turn his head without moving his tail?”

Burling retired in April 1802and turned his business over to his sons Samuel and William, but his furniture still survives and is prized in the antique market.

Leave a Comment

Effingham Lawrence the Druggist

February 12, 2015 in Lawrence Family No Comments Tags: Effingham Lawrence, Genealogy, pharmaceuticals, Quakers

This Effingham Lawrence (June 6, 1760-December 13, 1800) was the son of Ann Burling and John Lawrence and my wife’s fourth great grand uncle. He married Elizabeth Watson (1764-1852) and had several children, including a Watson Effingham and an Effingham Watson (the lure of the name was irresistible).

Like many young male Quakers, Effingham succumbed to the allure of the Revolution, and was disowned by the Friends for wearing a cocked hat and sword.

In 1781 Effingham established his druggist’s business at 99 Pearl Street. He was the druggist and apothecary to the Medical Society, a committee of which examined his store quarterly and “certified that his drugs were genuine and his medicines faithfully prepared.” He was one of the sponsors of the Tontine Coffee House, and was the only sponsor listed as a “gentleman.”

In 1790 Thomas Jefferson returned from France. During his New York stay, he patronized several of the shops run by my wife’s relatives. In July 1790 Jefferson paid Effingham Lawrence, a druggist at 227 Queen Street [Pearl Street], for red bark and toothbrushes.

An eighteenth-century toothbrush

Napoleon’s toothbrush

In 1794 Effingham sold his business to Jacob Schieffelin and John Lawrence and retired to his country estate in Flushing. This sale had long-term consequences for the family, as we shall see.

The Quaker roots of the family were important in establishing its role in the pharmaceutical business.

When Schieffelin and John Lawrence entered into the drug business, the trade was primarily conducted by wholesale houses in New York and Philadelphia. Before the Revolutionary War, drugs and botanicals had been mostly supplied by the English. By the time of the Revolution, about half of the drug manufacturing in England was controlled by the Quakers. Quaker pharmacists in America had ready access to the latest and most up-to-date information thanks to their coreligionists in England. At the end of the eighteenth century, druggists provided a wide array of medicines, botanical products, cooking spices, surgical supplies, medicine chests, as well items found today in hardware stores — paints and glassware, for example — to general stores, physicians, farmers, plantations, ships, and apothecary shops. Soon after the beginning of the eighteenth century, many druggists and apothecaries had expanded into chemical manufacturing, an activity that accelerated during the Revolutionary War, when, cut off from England, druggists learned new manufacturing techniques to produce the embargoed chemicals.

Leave a Comment

Hannah Lawrence the Poetess

February 10, 2015 in Lawrence Family, Uncategorized 2 Comments Tags: Genealogy

Hannah Lawrence (1758-1838) was the fourth great grand aunt of my wife. Hannah, like most members of the numerous Lawrence clan, was a Quaker, but she did not let this deter her from an assertive and adventurous life.

The Quakers, as pacifists, tired to stay neutral during the American Revolution, but most of the Lawrences sympathized with the American side and some of the teenage boys and young men joined the militia. Hannah was not to able to fight, but she was a poetess and used her poetic talents against the British.

In the poem “Interposition” she wrote: “They [the British] fly to crush the blameless son of freedom and of me.” She also wrote a poem “On the Purpose to which the Avenue Adjoining Trinity Church has of late been dedicated,1779,” about the behavior of British soldiers, had it privately printed and dropped it on sidewalks.

This is the scene of gay resort,

Here Vice and Folly hold their court,

Here all the Martial band parade,

To vanquish — some unguarded Maid.

Here ambles many a dauntless chief

Who can — oh great ! beyond belief,

Who can — as sage Historians say,

Defeat — whole bottles in array!

Heavens ! shall a mean, inglorious train,

The mansions of our dead profane?

A herd of undistinguish’d things.

That shrink beneath the power of Kings!

Sons of the brave immortal band

Who led fair Freedom to this land,

Say — shall a lawless race presume

To violate the sacred Tomb?

And calmly, you, the insult bear —

Even wildest rage were virtue here.

Shades of our Sires, indignant rise,

Oh arm! to vengeance, arm the skies.

Oh rise! for no degenerate son

Bids impious blood the guilt atone,

By thunder from the ethereal plains.

Avenge your own dishonored Manes,

And guardian lightnings flash around,

And vindicate the hallow’d ground!

In the meanwhile the British officer Jacob Schieffelin (about whom much more in future blogs) came to New York. He got one glimpse of Hannah and fell in love. He got himself billeted in the Lawrence house, and very shortly she returned his affections, having, as she said, “opportunity almost hourly of discovering new merits.”

Jacob Schieffelin

She wrote the story of the courtship. “A Journal of a Lady’s Courtship,” in which she assumed the name Lavinia and gave Jacob the name Altamont. On July 29, 1780 she wrote, “the World, the world will condemn me for imprudence.” She started thinking of a course of action that “would shock those whose esteem is most dear to me, and astonish those who ever heard the name of Mathilda,” under which she had written her anti-British poems.

John Lawrence, her father, was not happy, but she married Jacob secretly at a friend’s house. Two days later she was disowned by the Quaker meeting. She and Jacob set off to Montreal bearing dispatches. She wrote a journal of her trip. Here is her description of Niagara Falls.

I proceeded … by slow and intricate windings up that rugged mountain, and contemplated the native wilderness of the scene through which we passed, till my ears were struck with the approaching sound of the falling torrent, and a sudden shower gave us to know that it could not be far distant, while innumerable isicles shook from the trees, on our heads, at every breath of wind, and were as quickly replaced by the constant succession of vapours condensing on the branches.

A considerable River first appeared, rolling down a gradual descent, and forming with the rapidity of its motion over the broken rocks, as we approached nearer the bank which had been worn away to an amazing depth, we were struck with motionless astonishment at the stupendous object that met our view, neither our surprize nor the deafening noise we heard, would admit of exclamation, we therefore stood gazing in silent awe and admiration. The whole River rushing abruptly down a terrific precipice, and rebounding in shattered particles, from the violence of its fall on said rocks, to nearly the height from whence it had precipitated itself. The earth seemed to tremble at the shock, and our sinking hearts corresponded with the idea. …

We prepared to descend [the path] to a level with the River … this with great difficulty, caution and the assistance of poles to prevent slipping we effected. … one of the gentlemen … then led me to a point of the rock that projected out in front of the Fall, from whence I could see the River descend as it were from the clouds, and with my eye follow its course, from its first rushing over the top, till it reached the margin of the stream below. … I grew giddy at the view.

She also met Indians, including the Iroquois Loyalist Molly Brant.

Molly Brant, British Heroine

Joseph Brant, her brother

She was a bit taken aback at the personal jewelry worn by the Indian allies of the British.

The sight of a fire in the Wilderness drew us to it in the evening, and I as a little surprised to find it surrounded by Indians. Under the shelter of an inverted canoe were seated two Warriors, with their wives and children, they made room for me between them with the greatest civility and perceiving I was a little frightened…they desired me in their language to take courage. Their heads were shaved and painted, and their appearance altogether savage, but their manners were not at all so — I was shocked to see a scalp dangling by my side from one of their ears; it was the size of a dollar, and fixed in a wooden ring, while a lock of beautiful dark hair hang on his horrid shoulder. On my observing it, he pointed to his head and pronounced the word “Yankee.”

She and Jacob returned to New York after the Revolution. He took over the Lawrence’s fledgling pharmaceutical business, and she settled down to steady ways.

Jacob and Hannah

Jacob founded Manhattanville. There he built St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. It was a free church (no pew rents) and, as Hannah was an abolitionist, it welcomed blacks. Jacob and Hannah are buried in the church.

Old St Mary’s Episcopal, Harlem

Hic jacent Jacobus et Hannah

Leave a Comment

Frederick Francis Alexandre, the Founder

February 10, 2015 in Alexandre Family, Uncategorized 9 Comments Tags: Alexandre Line, City of Vera Cruz wreck, City of Washington wreck, Frederick Francis Alexandre, Genealogy

Francois or Frederick Francis Alexandre (1809-1889) was the founder of the family fortune and my wife’s great great grandfather. His was a real American success story. His obituary gives some details of his life:

Francois Alexandre, a merchant, born in Jersey on 5 August 1809, died in New York City on 8 June 1889. He was the son of a farmer. With an inclination for a sailor’s life, he went to sea at an early age, and acquired an education by attending school during his stay in various ports and devoting the spare time on ship to reading.

At the age of twenty-one he took command of a vessel, which he directed for years, renouncing in favor of his sisters the estate which he had inherited from his father. When about 28 years old, the young captain settled in New York City, establishing a small commission house in South Street, paying at first an annual rent of $25.

In 1842 he established a line of sailing vessels between New York and Honduras, and subsequently between New York, Vera Cruz and South America. In this enterprise he succeeded so well that, in 1867, he sold the sailing vessels, substituted steamers, and for 19 years carried mails, freights and passengers between New York, Havana, and Mexico.

A few clarifications can be added to this brief account.

He was born on St. Heller Isle. When his father died when Francis was thirteen, under the English law of primogeniture he would get the family property, but renounced it because his “sturdy English self-reliance.” He went to sea “before the mast.” At twenty-one he commanded the Nina on a voyage from Liverpool to Rio de Janeiro. He was active in the Brazil trade, but saw greater possibilities in New York. When he married in 1838, he gave up sailing and opened a chandler’s shop on Washington Street in Manhattan.

He quickly branched out into shipping, and at one point owned fourteen ships. The Alexandre line was the first to have regularly scheduled sailing between New York, Cuba, and Mexico. It got a subsidy from the Mexican government to carry the mail. It also began the Caribbean tourism business. The Alexandre company issued to pamphlet, New and Varied Excursion to the Tropics for Invalids and Tourists. A tourist guide noted that the sailings were regular but not always on schedule:

The Alexandre line publishes a pamphlet in which the time of the voyage from New Orleans to Vera Cruz is stated as “about five days” and from New York to Vera Cruz as “about ten days.” This statement often proves untrue, unless great latitude is given to the word “about.”

Weather was unpredictable, and could delay landing in Mexico for days.

The company flourished for decades. However, in 1887 the government of Mexico transferred its subsidy to a heavily subsided Spanish shipping company and te line was no longer viable. Alexandre and his sons liquidated the company and sold its ships to its competitor, the Ward Line (of Moro Castle fame). Francis died on June 8, 1889.

In 1838 Francis had married Marie Civilise Cipriant (1811-1882). He was Episcopalian and she was Catholic. He never became Catholic, but attended church with her. Three sons, John, Joseph, and Henry survived him.

The Alexandre Line Ships

The City of Puebla

The Alexandre line has introduced another improvement, in such ships as the City of Pueblo. The saloon is provided with small tables, as in a restaurant. The passenger is not obliged to eat with a crowd of strangers, but selects his own time for meals, paying only for what he orders.

The City of Washington

The City of Washington was launched on August 30, 1877 in Chester, Pennsylvania.

she can accommodate 100 first-class passengers, with 75 state rooms, besides accommodations for officers, crew and 250 steerage passengers.

The City of Washington was sold to the Ward Lines, and had an exciting career.

The night the Maine exploded in Havana Harbor (February 15, 1898), the City of Washington was also moored in Havana Harbor. Moored in close proximity to the Maine, the City of Washington suffered injury to her awnings, raise and deck houses by flying debris. Immediately after the explosion, finding the Maine a disaster, the crew of the City of Washington went to aid the Maine. The first round of emergency boats lowered were destroyed by flying shrapnel. After the second round of boats reached the water, the City of Washington, and the Spanish cruiser, Alfonso XII assisted in the rescue of the crew of the Maine. The City of Washington formed a makeshift hospital from their dining salon.

Eventually the City of Washington was cut down and used as a coal barge.

On July 10, 1917, City of Washington and another barge, Seneca, were under tow by the tugboat Luckenbach 4 when all three vessels ran aground on a shallow reef near Key Largo in the Florida Keys.

The wreck of the City of Washington has become a popular dive site.

The City of Vera Cruz

On August 28, 1880, a terrible hurricane struck the City of Vera Cruz. One of the steamer’s lifeboats was loaded with people and readied for launching, but the boat was dashed to pieces before they even reached the water. Those who were not crushed to death outright were dropped, half stunned, into the sea, where they were drowned. A second boat met the same fate.

Men and Women were in the cabin praying and shrieking, and screaming. All of a sudden there was a snapping sound as of many timbers giving way. In the next minute the City of Vera Cruz went down, carrying all aboard. Then one person and another came to the top, grasping wildly for something to support them. The nearest land (Cape Canaveral, Florida) was almost thirteen miles away, and there was no way that the current was going to let them swim straight for it. The water was dotted with their heads and was filled with heavy pieces of wreck. Some of them were struck by this stuff, and so much stunned that they went down again, never to come up. Sixty nine men women and children perished.

Somehow, eleven men found the courage, strength and stamina to survive the mountainous seas and the foam which they sucked in with each tortured breath. Twenty six hours later the, by then, nude, battered and exhausted survivors struggled ashore about fifteen to twenty miles south of Daytona.

General Torbert, an old man with a white beard, who had once fought bravely in the Civil War, was among those who managed to make it to the beach alive. The fearless, but tender General had sought to calm the crying children before the ship sank, and he deserved to live. But, the General’s old body had been pushed to far, and he died at the water’s edge.

A mother, tightly clasping her daughter to her chest, was sighted shortly after the ship went down. A day later, over thirty miles from the wreck, still bound in the same embrace, they came ashore, but both were dead. Seaman James H. Kelly had saved the lives of others on four previous occasions, and it was now his turn to be saved. Kelly may have felt the hand of God on his shoulder as he stumbled ashore. But Kelly and the others who survived the tempest were to live with the nightmare of it for the rest of their lives.

It has become a popular dive site. Shipwrecks, Inc. has tried to locate and salvage treasure. Two passengers were jewelers who were taking their products to Mexico to open a store there.

Leave a Comment

Effingham Embree the Clockmaker

February 8, 2015 in Lawrence Family, Uncategorized 4 Comments Tags: Effingham Embree, Quaker marriage, Society for teh Manumission of Slaves

Effingham Embree (1759=1817) was the husband of the 4th great grand aunt (Mary Lawrence, 1763-1831) of my wife. He was probably named after his uncle, Effingham Lawrence. The Embrees continued to bestow the name of Effingham on their children down to the present day.

The Businessman

He was a clockmaker, businessman, and land speculator in New York.

He was born in Flushing, but moved to Manhattan to learn the clock making trade.. By 1781 Effingham and Thomas Pearsall were conducting a watch making business together. By 1789 Effingham was in business for himself, making clocks and watches and selling jewelry from his shop at 185 Pearl Street (named Queen Street during the British occupation).

It would be more accurate to call Effingham a clock assembler rather than a maker. Like others in the trade, he purchased parts locally and from England and assembled them in a way to guarantee the accuracy of the movements. Some wooden cases were made locally, others imported. But his name engraved on the dial indicate that he had assembled the clock and guaranteed its accuracy.

A Pearsall and Embree clock

Effingham Embree tall clock in Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House

It was presented in 1976 as as the Bicentennial gift of the Society of Colonial Dames.

Another Effingham Embree tall clock

An Effingham Embree watch with his name engraved on it

A receipt with his signature

Effingham engaged in land speculation. He owned large tracts of unimproved land in New York, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. Closer to home he bought, divided, and sold land in Manhattan. His deals in 1785 involved the equivalent of about $600,000 in 2015 dollars. He also loaned money. Lawsuits for unpaid loans indicate the scale of his transactions: one was for $200,000 in 2015 dollars.

Effingham invested in the Tontine Coffee House, which provided a home for the fledgling New York Stock Exchange.

Tontine Coffee House: building on left with flag

The Citizen

Although a Quaker, when he was 16, in 1775, Effingham joined Captain Egbert’s company. He was a member of the St. Tammany society. The members put on war paint and feathers to parade and to feast on various patriotic holidays. It evolved into Tammany Hall.

The Legendary St. Tammany

Effingham was one of the first members of the Society for the Manumission of Slaves; John Jay was the first president. The Society was for gradual abolition. It also maintained a registry of free blacks to protect against kidnapping and re-enslavement. The Society persuaded the government of New York to forbid the export and import of slaves, but slavery was not abolished completely until July 4, 1827 In 1786 the Society stared a free school for African boys, Effingham was a trustee.

John Jay, Governor Clinton, and Effingham , and about half of the members of the society owned slaves. Slaves could not be freed unless the State agreed that they were able to support themselves, so owners had to continue to own and support slaves, even as they worked for the full abolition of slavery.

The Marriage

Effingham and Mary were first cousins. Both families were Quakers, and the Quakers frowned upon marriages between such close relatives. Nonetheless Effingham and Mary married in December 1780 when New York was still under British occupation .

The Women’s Minutes of the Flushing Monthly meeting was held on February 7, 1781 decided:

Wheras Mary Embree (late Lawrence) was Educated in the Profession of Truth, which would if attended to preserve us in a Steady Uniform Conduct, hath so far deviated therefrom, & the Principals there of us to Marry he First Cousin, which Marriage was Accomplished by a Priest, which practices we Testify against & disown that said Mary Embree from being a Member of our Religious Society until from a Sense of her Misconduct she Condemns the same to the Satisfaction of the Meeting.

(The “priest” was a clergyman of some other denomination; the Quakers have no clergy.)

Effingham demonstrated repentance and joined the Flushing meeting in 1797; Mary waited until 1815 to apply, and then it was not to the Flushing but to the New York Meeting, although she was living in Flushing.

Flushing Meeting House, built 1694

In 1796 Effingham gave up his shop and moved back to the Flushing farm. He died of consumption, that is, tuberculosis, on December 3, 1817.

(Many thanks to his descendent, Mary Ellen Embree LeBien, and her book Embree Remembered [2002])

Leave a Comment

James Pollock and “In God We Trust”

February 5, 2015 in Rutters, Uncategorized 2 Comments Tags: Genealogy, Governor James Pollock, In God We Trust, Know Nothings, Pennsylvania State University, Sunday Schools

Portrait of James Pollock by John F. Francis

James Pollock was my wife’s third great grand uncle. He was the uncle of Sarah Pollock, the wife of James H. Rutter.

James Pollock was born on September 11, 1810, in Milton, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian parents. He graduated from the College of New Jersey (Princeton University) with a bachelor’s and master’s degree, both with highest honors. (He later became President of Princeton’s Board of Trustees.) He returned home to set up a law practice. He was appointed a judge and a district attorney, and in 1844 was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives, where he served three terms. While he was in Washington, he shared a boardinghouse with Abraham Lincoln and they became friends.

Pollock was keen on technology. He supported Samuel Morse and his idea for a telegram and was in the room when the famous message, “What hath God wrought” was received. He also pushed for the construction of a transcontinental railroad; in 1848 he said, “At the risk of being considered insane, I will venture the prediction that, in less than twenty-five years from this evening, a railroad will be completed and in operation between New York and San Francisco, California.” It was finally completed in 1869.

After the left the House, Pollock was appointed a federal judge in Pennsylvania. In 1854 the Whigs nominated Pollock for the governorship of Pennsylvania. He was also supported by the Nativist Know-Nothings (of which Samuel Morse was a member) who were anti-slavery.

Inauguration of Governor James Pollock

Pollock defeated the Democratic candidate, and began selling off the obsolete public works of the state, the canals and portage railroad which were outmoded by the new railroads and which were beset by corrupt administration. These works had been a drain on the public treasury. Pollock reduced state debt and lowered taxes. He chartered State Normal Schools and Pennsylvania State University and located it in the middle of the state.

In 1855 in thanksgiving for the harvest and the preservation of the country from war, Pollock signed a Thanksgiving Proclamation, which concluded:

Acknowledging with grateful hearts these manifold blessings of a beneficent Providence we should “offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay our vows unto the Most High.”

Under the solemn conviction of the importance and propriety of this duty, and in conformity with the wishes of many good citizens, I, James Pollock, Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, do herby appoint Thursday, the 22^nd of November next, as a day of General Thanksgiving and Praise throughout this State; and earnestly implore the people that, setting aside all worldly pursuits on that day, they unite in offering thanks to Almighty God for his past goodness and mercy; and beseech him for a continuation of his blessings.”

In the prelude to the War between the States, the country was convulsed by the controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would undo the anti-slavery provisions of the Missouri Compromise. Pollock served as head of the Pennsylvania delegation at the Washington Peace Conference in 1861 and attempted to avert war. He was unsuccessful.

Pollock was a man of great Christian faith. He presided over the American Sunday School Union from 1855 until his death. It was said ‘he was always eager to do his Lord’s business with earnestness and dispatch’ and while conscious of the power of his masterful mind and loving heart, his fellows managers ‘most appreciated his depth of consecration.’

In 1861 Lincoln appointed Pollock the Director of the U S. Mint in Philadelphia.

in his 1863 report to the Secretary of the Treasury, he [Pollock] wrote, “We claim to be a Christian nation—why should we not vindicate our character by honoring the God of Nations…Our national coinage should do this. Its legends and devices should declare our trust in God—in Him who is “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” The motto suggested, “God our Trust,” is taken from our National Hymn, the Star-Spangled Banner.” The sentiment is familiar to every citizen of our country—it has thrilled the hearts and fallen in song from the lips of millions of American Freemen. The time for the introduction of this or a similar motto, is propitious and appropriate. ‘Tis an hour of National peril and danger—an hour when man’s strength is weakness—when our strength and our nation’s strength and salvation, must be in the God of Battles and of Nations. Let us reverently acknowledge his sovereignty, and let our coinage declare our trust in God.”

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

He died on April 19, 1890; his reputation of honesty and integrity was recognized even by his enemies. In the funeral sermon, the Rev. John Hemphill proclaimed:

I look back over fifty years of American history, and I can find no man as conspicuous as he in civic life, who can claim precedence of him in all the qualities that go to make up a noble, moral manhood. For fully half a century he was exposed to influences which have wrought the undoing of thousands, but he kept “his garments unspotted from the world.” He could have died a millionaire, but, loathing alike the bribe giver and the bribe taker, he died with clean hands and a clean soul, leaving to his children, and to his children’s children, and to the whole Church of God, the glorious heritage of a “good name” which is far better than “great riches.”

His tombstone monument appropriately reads:

“James Pollock 1810-1890 ‘In God We Trust’”

At a website there are dozens of memorials to Pollock. One is

Honoring you on your 121st anniversary in heaven.

And another, by a great, great great grandniece:

Perhaps we will meet in Heaven dearest Uncle. May you rest in peace. It took me a long time to find you, but I am proud to have done so.

Leave a Comment

The Railroad Rutters

February 4, 2015 in Rutters 1 Comment Tags: Chancellorsville, Genealogy, James H. Rutter, Nathaniel Rutter, New York Central, Willaim Vanderbilt, William Rutter

The Rutters were involved in the railroad business for generations.

William Edward Rutter was my wife’s third great grandfather. He was involved in the transition between horse carriages and railroad carriages.

The Elmira Car Works was founded at Elmira, New York, in 1851 by William E. Rutter, as a car repair shop servicing the newly constructed New York & Erie Railroad. A year later it began to build cars.

Elmira Car Works’ founder, William E. Rutter (1812-1882), was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and had learned the trade of carpenter in Baltimore. (One source says he was an experienced carriage builder.) In the early 1830s he went to work for the Boston & Providence Railroad, and later became master mechanic on their Stonington line. He moved to Elmira only a little before opening his plant.

In 1848 he sold his plant to the Erie railroad, but stayed on as manager.

His sons were William Rutter (?-1854), Nathaniel Rutter (1841-1863) and James H. Rutter (1836-1885), from whom my wife is descended.

William Rutter died young. He had a heart attack on October 18, 1854 when he was responding to a fire with Young America Hose Company.

Nathaniel Rutter enlisted as a second lieutenant in the 107^th New York Regiment, “Campbell Guards.” He rose to the rank of captain December 31, 1862, fought in the first battle of Antietam, was killed by a shell at the battle of Chancellorsville on May 1, 1863. He was twenty-two. Col Colbey described him as “a worthy and competent officer.”

The 107^th New York

This regiment, known as the Campbell Guards, was recruited in the counties of Chemung, Schuyler and Steuben, rendezvoused at Elmira, and was there mustered into the U. S. service for three years, Aug. 13, 1862. It was a fine regiment, noted for its efficiency and discipline, the first regiment from the North organized under the second call, and the first to arrive at Washington, in acknowledgment of which it received a banner from the state and a personal visit from the president. It was raised by two patriotic members of the legislature, Robert B. Van Valkenburg, and Alexander S. Diven, who became colonel and lieutenant-colonel, respectively. It left the state on Aug. 13, 1862; was stationed in the defenses of Washington for a month; was then assigned to the 1st division (Williams), 12th corps (Mansfield), and fought its first battle at Antietam, where it was heavily engaged, losing 63 in killed, wounded and missing. The veteran Gen. Mansfield fell, mortally wounded at Antietam, and Gen. Henry W. Slocum succeeded to the command of the corps. The regiment was again heavily engaged at the disastrous battle of Chancellorsville, where the brunt of the fighting fell on the 3d and 12th corps, and lost in this action 83 killed, wounded and missing, among the killed being Capt. Nathaniel E. Rutter.

James H. Rutter was my wife’s great great grandfather. He was born February 3, 1836 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He studied at the Scholfield Business School and At the age of 18, in 1854, he started his career as a clerk in the fright office of the Erie Railroad. The next year he became chief clek in the freight office of the Williamsport and Elmira Railroad. In 1857, at the age of twenty-one, he became chief clerk in the Chicago freight office of the Michigan Central and Northern Indian Railroad. In 1858 he became freight agent of the Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad. In 1860 he was back in Elmira as the stationmaster of the Erie Railroad. In 1864 he became freight agent in Buffalo of the Erie Railroad, and in 1866 the assistant general freight agent.

While testifying about railroad rates, he impressed William H. Vanderbilt, who hired him in 1870 as the General Freight Agent of the New York Central with the salary of $15,000 a year ($250,000 in 2015 dollars). In 1877 he became a director of the New York Central, in 1880 Third Vice-President, and in 1883, at the age of forty-seven, President of the New York Central.

William Vanderbilt had been in poor health, (high blood pressure, mild stroke); he had sons, but knew that Rutter was more intelligent and competent.

Mark Twain was scheduled to meet Rutter in 1885 to interest him in investing in the printing telegraph and the typesetter that Twain hoped would make his fortune, but Rutter was ill with diabetes at his house in Irvington and died on June 27, 1885.

At the same time, unbeknownst to each other, his wife Sarah Pollack Rutter was dying of brain inflammation. She died the next day, June 28, 1885.

They were buried from St. Thomas Church in New York at the same service. They left several children. They named one Nathaniel, after his uncle who had died at Chancellorsville, and ever afterwards there have been Nathaniels in the family. Their son, Nathaniel Enzie Rutter, was my wife’s great grandfather.

Leave a Comment

A Brief Note on the Jules Reynal Roche Fermoy de Saint-Michels

February 3, 2015 in Thebaud-Reynal, Uncategorized 2 Comments Tags: Genealogy, Jules Reynal, Rocky Dell, St. John's White Plains

Jules Reynal Roche Fermoy de Saint-Michel was born in Martinique in 1838 and came to the Unites States in 1848. He married Nathalie Florence Higgins (1848-1901). They were the parents of Mathilde Reynal, the wife of Paul Gilbert Thebaud, Sr., they of the stolen jewels.

Several members of the Renal family used the full form of their name – Reynal Roche Fermoy de Saint-Michel – or insisted of the French pronunciation of their first and last names. New Yorkers found this insufferably pretentious. But if my last name were Reynal Roche Fermoy de Saint-Michel I would be strongly tempted to flaunt it in the faces of all the Smiths and Joneses, not to mention the van-Thises and the van-Thats.

Jules, according to a descendent, was “a poor but noble Frenchman, descended from French Huguenots from Normandy.” His ancestor had come from China to New York in 1771. His wife came from a wealthy family. Her father, Nathaniel Higgins, a carpet manufacturer, in 1882 left $1,500,000 (c. $35,000,000 in 2015 dollars) to the Reynal children. When Jules Reynal died in 1894, he left an estate of only $50,000.

As my wife has noticed, her New York family were the Kardashians of their day. A marital spat and the separation of Jules and Natalie were detailed in the papers. Nathalie remained in the Madison Avenue townhouse with the children while Jules moved to a hotel. But in 1894 he became ill; the children, although members of the jeunesse doree, as the papers put it, and his alienated wife nursed him, and all was well and everyone went to the country seat Rocky Dell, in Westchester County.

Rocky Dell

There Jules and his son Eugene after him were masters of hound with the Westchester Hunt Club. Jules commisoned portraits of his dogs from Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait.

In September 1879, Jules shot a three-legged woodcock near his house in White Plains; it made it into the Scientific American.

Genuine Three-Legged Woodcock

Nathalie was a great tea and luncheon giver.

In 1889 she offered lunch to 90 ladies at 14 tables.

In the centre of each was a large Dresden candelabrum, with wax lights, each light having a delicate satin shade. The menu was printed on the inside of folding tablets, the exterior of which was of red satin. The family monogram was painted on each in gold, and the name of the guest was underneath the monogram. The floral favors were in the form of gentlemen’s hats, Indian hampers, and double baskets. These were all filled with the choicest flowers of the season.

A notable feature of the occasion was the elegance of the toilets.

The papers detailed the arrangements of an 1896 affair:

Some of the twenty matrons who attended the mauve luncheon insist it was one of the prettiest ever given in town. It was mauve and gold, and mostly the latter. All the plates that were not gold were mauve color. Even the ices were mauve colored, and a great mound of the lavender orchids was on the table. Clusters of these tied with a ribbon to match were at each place.

Nathalie summered (note teh Wasp verb) at Bar Harbor, first at Ban-Y-Bryn:

Designed by Architect S. V. Stratton, Ban-y-Bryn was built on a steep bluff, with the front of the cottage facing the rustic Maine landscape. The rear of the home, with its prominent turret and several grand porches, overlooked Frenchman’s Bay. Rising to four stories, the home consisted of 27 rooms, including seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, five fireplaces, a large stable, seven servants’ bedrooms, and additional servants’ facilities.

And then at Cornersmeet. There she got into trouble.

Her doctor had told her to eat s partridge a day. She served twenty-five of them out of season in September 1889. The Maine State Game Warden heard about it, and called at Cornersmeet. The housekeeper confessed, Nathalie ended up paying a fine of $254 and stormed out of Bar Harbor, threatening never to return. Society was aghast.

All day society has been indignantly discussing the “outrage,” and the opinion has become quite thoroughly crystallized that a law which attempts to obstruct the gastronomic enjoyment of people is a baneful one.

In March 1901 Mrs Reynal, her son Eugene Sugny, and his fiancée Adeleide Fitzgerald were at Gedney Farms the home of the Willets (where the theft of the Thebaud jewels would later occur). Eugene and Adelaide both came down with scarlet fever and the house was quarantined. Eugene at first recovered but then started failing. A priest was summoned to administer last rites to Eugene. Adelaide was alarmed, and without telling the parents, had the priest marry them in the sick room, with only the doctor and nurse as witnesses.

Nathalie built the church of St. John the Evangelist in White Plains as a memorial to her son Jules, who died as a child. She bought the land, built the church, furnished it, and turned it over to the congregation debt-free in 1892. She was buried from there after her death on May 2, 1901.

St .John the Evangelist

In 1910 the New York, Westchester, and Boston Railroad, a J. P. Morgan folly, wanted to build a line through Rocky Dell. The then-owner, Nathaniel Reynal, would not sell a right of way because the railroad would be within a few hundred feet of his house, and the railroad did not want to buy the whole estate.

Change was inevitable, and the Reynal estate was subdivided.

It is now the Rocky Dell and Reynal Park neighborhoods.

Leave a Comment

Paul Gibert Thebaud, Jr., and the Servant Problem

February 1, 2015 in Thebaud-Reynal 2 Comments Tags: John Bjorlin, Paul Gibert Thebaud Jr.

Paul Gibert Thebaud Jr. was born on October 17, 1891. He attended Pomret School.

The Case of the Swedish Butler

John Bjorlin was born in Stockholm of a well to do family. He attended Uppsala University and graduated summa cum laude. He spoke Russian, English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian.

But after graduating, he moved to Paris, and there got involved with unspecified “inclinations and habits” that caused his father to disown him and leave his property to John’s brother, Niels.

He was well educated but penniless, but his manners and his ability with languages enabled him to get jobs as an upper servant, as courier, interpreter, and head of household. In 1904 He married Kate Bobb in Philadelphia, but deserted her after three months.

The Thebauds hired him as the tutor for their son Paul Gibert Jr. He also accompanied the elder Thebaud on business trips in his import-export business as an interpreter.

In 1907 Bjorlin became more and more morose and started drinking heavily. He had a gun because of burglar scares in White Plains – and the Thebauds had already had a jewelry theft.

On November 10 Paul Jr. had been riding his motorcycle all day and retired exhausted.

At 5:50 AM on November 11, 1907, the night watchman roused Bjorlin, who, clad only in his bathrobe, went to Paul Jr.’s room and locked the door behind him. Shortly after that the watchman heard a shot, and a minute after that another shot. Bjorlin had put his gun to the forehead of the sleeping Paul Jr., shot him, and then put the gun to his own head and shot himself. Bjorlin died instantly with a bullet in his brain.

What lead Bjorlin to do this? Various theories were put forward in the newspapers:

Bjorlin was suffering from delirium tremens and was totally insane.
Bjorlin thought he heard a burglar in Paul’s room and shot the boy by mistake. When he say what a mistake he had made, he turned the gun on himself.
Bjorlin and Paul were going to go hunting that morning. Bjorlin jokingly pointed the revolver a Paul; when it went off, he was horrified and decided to kill himself.
Bjorlin intended to kill the other butler and shot Paul by mistake
A burglar has shot them both.

But

Bjorlin had left a hurriedly written will on his desk
Bjorlin had made a list of all the people in the house he intended to kill, all the family and servants, with Paul Jr. as Number One.

It was clearly a matter of an attempted murder and a suicide. But what could have been the motive? Was it simply insanity?

The New York Times reported that

Bjorlin showed a great fondness for Paul Thebaud. They became almost inseparable companions.

Another paper reported that

Bjorlin, the other servants said, was so fond of young Thebaud that he scowled and fumed if the boy spoke kindly to anyone but him. Several times he threatened to thrash stablemen and undermen in the house whom he accused of currying favor with Paul.

Friends of the family had been suspicious of the relationship of Paul Jr. and Bjorlin. They said

the bond between them was strangely close for master and servant

and

from the beginning of his service had displayed extreme affection for the young Paul.

The most likely explanation is that Bjorlin had become infatuated and obsessed with the boy. Bjorlin feared discharge and separation, so he decided to kill the boy he loved and himself. One can surmise the nature of the activities Bjorlin had engaged in in Paris. The investigation seems to have been quickly dropped and the official explanation was that Bjorlin had intended to kill the other butler. This unconvincing explanation is an indication that the detectives suspected what was going on, but did not want to embarrass either the boy (who was probably completely unaware of the nature of Bjorlin’s interest in him – it was a more innocent age) or the family.

Paul Jr. almost miraculously survived, seemingly unscathed. When he regained consciousness, he was told initially that he had fallen and hit his head on a radiator. Later he was told the truth, but he could supply no motive for Bjorlin’s actions.

A Mostly Normal Life

Paul Jr. took up race car driving.

During World War I he applied his expertise. He served

in a special innovative army corps in WWI devoted to motorcycles with sidecars and mounted machine guns.

On February 5, 1914, he married Dorothy Vander Hooge in a small ceremony at St. Agnes Church in Manhattan. They had had several children.

He was president of the St. Nicholas Society.

Dedication of Sunnyside, the historic home of Washington Irving in Tarrytown, New York.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., speaking.

On left: Paul G. Thebaud (in sash), president of the St. Nicholas Society of the City of New York, is seated with other members of the society, accompanied with retainers of the society clad in costumes inspired by the tunics worn by pages in the service of the old Dutch Governors of New York. At rear, Frances Lehnerts, who sang the National Anthem during the dedication. On right: Washington Irving III (1917-1968, great-great-grand nephew of Washington Irving) seated behind weathercock, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, David Rockefeller (obscured), and Alice Runyan.

But he continued his love of motorcycles:

Even into his very later years, he was known to drive up in his motorcycle with sidecar from Greenwich, CT to Woods Hole, MA to catch the boat over to Nantucket for the summer.

He died September 2, 1983 in Connecticut.

Leave a Comment

Paul Gibert Thebaud Sr. and the Servant Problem

January 30, 2015 in Genealogy, Rutters 2 Comments Tags: Edward Kern, Genealogy, Hillair, Paul Gibert Thebaud

The Thebaud family is distantly related to the Alexandres. The wealthy Catholic families of New York tended to intermarry, just as the Quaker families did. Paul Gibert Thebaud Sr. (1866-1925) was the husband of sister-in-law of the great grandmother of my wife. Paul Sr. married Mathilde Eugenie Reynal on June 16, 1889 in St. Francis Xavier. It was a spectacle:

The white marble altar was covered with candles; twenty priests in rich vestments and a hundred choristers thronged the chancel; the Archbishop [Corrigan] in vestments of white and gold and wearing his jeweled mitre, performed the ceremony, while the bridal procession, composed of twelve ushers, twenty bridesmaids, and the bride, leaning on her father’s arm, swept up the broad centre aisle to the superb wedding march from Lohengrin, rendered by a full string orchestra with organ accompaniment.

The bride’s dowry was $1,000,000 ($26,000,000 in 2015 dollars) and she also received 300 presents from the 3,000 guests:, including a complete dinner service in gold and silver.

Mathilde was the sister of Nathaniel Reynal, the second husband of Sarah Caldwell (my wife is descended from her first husband, Nathaniel Rutter), and that is one way my wife is related to the Reynals, about whom much will be said in later blogs.

A distant relationship, but the families kept up contact, and a Mrs. Thebaud was the godmother of my wife’s uncle Teddy. When, as a child, he received a present from her, he asked his mother, “Who is ‘the bawd?’”

Paul Sr. was a commission merchant with the firm Paul G. and Paul L. Thebaud, which had been founded as Bouchard, Thebaud and Co. in 1789. Paul Sr. did well for himself. A taste for big houses runs through all the family He had a town house on Madison Avenue, and decided to build a mansion in White Plains. While he was building it he stayed in White Plains, with friends, the Howard Willets.

There a crime, which sounds like it had been plotted by P.G. Woodhouse, affected the tranquility of the Thebauds.

Mr. and Mrs. Edward Kern, Sr., a Swiss couple, worked for the Thebauds. Their son, Edward Jr. was visting them and caught Mr. Thebaud’s eye. Edward was hired as Thebaud’s valet. The elder Kern had spent a year in the Tombs in 1895-1896 for swindling. Kern was also a small time crook. He had been convicted of forgery in Switzerland and under the name of Emil Brown he served a year for forgery. All of this was of course unknown to the Thebauds.

Edward Kern, Jr.

Marie Pollion

Kern had met the wife of a French waiter, the lovely Madame Marie Pollion, in Switzerland in 1896.

They both ended up in New York, and resumed the affair. But he needed some cash to finance the escapade. After working a few weeks at the Thebauds, he knew that Mrs. Thebaud had a fortune in jewels.

On Saturday December 28, 1901, the Thebauds went to visit Willets in White Plains. Kern accompanied them, but returned to the city on the pretense of having forgotten the razors. He emptied the strongbox, which contained mostly stickpins (275 of them), but did not find the main jewels.

Kern put the jewels in a satchel, caught the 11:30 PM train to White Plains and fell asleep. Mr. Thebaud was also in town and boarded the same train and got into the same car. He saw Kern asleep with a satchel at his feet. Thebaud thought he should teach Kern a lesson about being careless, so he had a trainman hide the satchel. When Kern woke up, he explained to Thebaud that he had forgotten the razors and had returned to get them. He was horrified to discover the satchel missing. Thebaud gave him a reproof and handled the satchel back to Kern – the satchel, Thebaud later realized that contained his stolen stickpins.

Kern then took the other jewels, a pear-shaped diamond (worth $20,000 then, $500,000 in 2015 dollars) and a pearl ($15,000 then, $350,000 in 2015 dollars). On Sunday morning he feigned illness and was allowed to take the Willets’ horse and buggy to the station to get a train to see a doctor.

The Thebauds and the Willets went to mass. By the afternoon Kern had not returned, and Mrs. Thebaud looked for her jewels, and discovered her diamond and pearls were missing although a brooch valued at $50,000 ($1,500,000 in 2015 dollars) was still there. She called the Madison Avenue townhouse, and the housekeeper discovered that the strong box was empty and the jewels gone.

The Thebauds called the police. A disconsolate Mr. Edward Pollion also came to the police. His neighbors had told him that his wife had run away with a young man, a valet , who had been a frequent visitor when Mr. Pollion was not home. Mrs. Pollion had not known (she later claimed) about the theft, but she agreed to go to a pawnshop with Kern and claim the jewels were hers. They got $700, all the cash the pawnbroker had on Sunday, on jewels valued at 30,000 and planned to escape to Switzerland. The police tracked and arrested Mrs. Pollion as she was biding farewell to friends. She had both her and Kern’s clothes with her. The pawnbroker, as soon as he had seen the account of the robbery, had called the police, police went to the pawnshop and recovered most of the the jewels that had been stolen.

The police identified Mrs. Pollion, Edward Kern, Sr. and Edward Kern, Jr. from the Rogues Gallery.

Kern met two fellow criminal, one of whom had met him at a race track and recognized him as the thief of the Thebaud jewels. Kern pled for silence and promised to split the loot. They traveled under assumed names, Theodore Manners (Kern), A. P. Howe, and P. Mars.

The three checked into a hotel in New Orleans. When Kern/Manners was out one evening, the other two asked that their trunks be brought down and checked out of the hotel. They later said they planned to have Kern file a claim for stolen property and get money from the hotel, but they either did not inform Kern of this plan or he forgot it – or, of course, they were lying. They went to two train stations to try to get a train out of town, but they were too late. They rowed a skiff across the Mississippi to Gretna and waited to catch the first morning train.

Meanwhile Manners-Kern returned to the hotel and discovered his fellow crooks and the loot gone. He reported the theft to the police. The police searched for the thieves, and a newsboy in Gretna reported two men were acting suspiciously. The police arrived and arrested them and informed Manners-Kern that he could come to reclaim his possessions. He was reluctant.

When he confronted the other two, one said “You have turned us in, you scoundrel.” He told the police: “This is Edward Kern, valet and thief, who robbed Paul Thebaud in New York.” The police looked in the valise and found $2,500 of jewelry which matched the description of the Thebaud jewels. Kern insisted he was Theodore Manners from Chicago.

Paul Thebaud and one of New York’s finest, Detective Kelly, arrived in Gretna to identify Kern and reclaim the jewels. Rumor had gotten around that Thebaud had offered a $10,000 reward for the jewels, but this was only a rumor. The sheriff refused to release Kern until Thebaud forked over the $10,000, and Thebaud refused to do that, because he had never promised it. Negotiations followed, and Thebaud made a gift of $250 to the Gretna police department.

Thebaud returned to New York, and Kelly and Kern were waiting in the train station to get the through train when Kelly spotted two pickpockets whom he knew, and lit off after them. He collared one immediately, and chased the other for half a mile before he collared him.

Kern pleaded guilty in April 1902 and got four and a half years in Sing Sing. The comrades who had gone off with his trunk were charged with theft, on the principle that thief one had priority over thief two. In June 1902 Kern tried to get them off by claiming that he had instructed them to take the trunk out of his room and meet him in Atlanta, where they were to divide the spoils or return his property. The judge was not impressed, and sentenced the two to three years of hard labor. After early release from Sing Sing, Kern resumed a spectacular career of con artistry , made the mistake of antagonizing William Randolph Hearst, and died in a hotel room after taking cyanide.

To add to the Thebauds’ troubles, at the same time the robbery was occurring the house that they were building caught fire and was totally destroyed. But Thebaud went ahead with new plans and built Hillair, which was completed in 1904.

The Architectural Record had an extended description of Hillair:

The house itself, facing south, is seen a distance of several miles away, and is a fairly true example of Georgian architecture. The plan being symmetrical, a necessity in this style, it has the usual porch, but on the rear or south front, and not at the entrance which is on the north. The material from which “Hillair” is built is Indiana limestone of the gray variety the surface of the walls being of coursed ashlar. The original design shows a house of brick, with the same limestone trim, cornice and columns as now exist. The change to stone enhances the general good appearance, and is in fact more in keeping with the design. The semi- hexagonal “porte-cochere” on the north is a reasonable departure from the Georgian period, and is distinctly eclectic in character, but entirely reasonable in its purpose and form. The classical character of the period is well exhibited in the entablature and columns of the Ionic order, on every side of the house. The owner insisted on a veranda surrounding the entire plan etc. etc. etc.

All was not well in the Thebaud establishment. The firm failed in 1907 because of the failure of a corresponding firm in Central America, although the Thebauds’ personal fortune was not affected.

In 1907 another catastrophe hit the family, one which I will cover in the blog about Paul Gilbert Thebaud Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Thebaud separated in 1911, and he gave her the house and $20,000,000 ($500,000,000 in 2013 dollars). He died in 1925.

Leave a Comment

Andrew Hutchins Mickle: Least Qualified Mayor of New York?

January 28, 2015 in Lawrence Family, Uncategorized No Comments Tags: Andrew Hutchins Mickle, chewing tobacco, G. B. Miller, Lawrence Family, Tammany

Andrew Hutchins Mickle was the husband of Mary Nicoll Lawrence, my wife’s third great-grand aunt. Mary Nicoll Lawrence (1822-1896) was the daughter of Judge Effingham Lawrence. Andrew Mickle, whose name means “Great” in Scots, was born on February 2, 1805 in the Sixth Ward. The Old Merchants of New York recounted of the house Mickle was born in:

We have watched for hours the honorable discipline of about twenty lusty porkers, who used to inhabit it, and went to regularly for grub in the morning, returned after sundown, and then marched upstairs t their place in the attic.

The Sixth Ward, which contained the notorious Five Points, was not as bad as it became later, and Mickle may have been pulling an Andrew Jackson in claiming low origins.

Andrew the Tobacconist

The G.B. Miller firm was a premiere tobacco firm, founded in 1776. The records are a little confused, but it appears that Rose Miller grew four acres of tobacco in New Windsor, and sold it as “Rose-Leaf Snuff and Tobacco.” The firm prospered, being run by George Benjamin Miller père et fils, and became renowned (and cursed) for its fine-cut chewing tobacco. Andrew Mickle went to work for the younger G. B. Miller. Upon G. B. Miller’s death in 1816 Mrs. Miller took over the business, and it prospered enough so that jokes were made about it:

Mrs. Miller became a byword for tobacco.

The Oneida community fought the use of tobacco, and finally everyone there renounced it:

“Good-bye Anderson, Lorrillard and Lillienthal. Your companionship, cosy as it is brings with it a bad smell. Good-bye, Mrs. G. B. Miller. Your charming influence does not render a man very acceptable to others of your sex. Thank God, the reign of yellow drizzle, spittoons, stale scents and ‘old-soldiers,’ is over! Thank God, the most vile, absurd, unclean, slave-driving tyranny that ever cursed humanity is hereabouts broken, and the insurrection is spreading!”

Andrew Mickle in 1827 married the Miller’s daughter, Caroline Augusta Miller (1810-1849). After her death he married Mary Nicoll Lawrence, the sister of Lydia Ann Lawrence, By his first wife he had a daughter Hannah Mickle, who married William Effingham Lawrence, son of Judge Effingham Lawrence. William was Mary Nicoll Lawrence’s – Andrew Mickle’s wife – brother, and was therefore Andrew’s brother-in-law and son-in-law (and probably other things as well, but those are the closest relationships).

Andrew the Politician

Tammany put forward Andrew Mickle as their candidate. A historian of Tammany recounts:

“It was in 1846, just at this period of rampant Tammany corruption, which was beginning to become somewhat too obvious, that Washington Irving returned to New York from Spain, where he had been Minister of the United States. He was received enthusiastically by the populace of New York, and Tammany joined vigorously in the welcome, for Tammany Hall needed a reputable man. The leaders of Tammany Hall offered Washington Irving the nomination for Mayor of New York. “It was not as a literary man especially that they desired to honor Irving,” wrote Mrs. Euphemia Vale Blake, “for they had always plenty of literary timber at hand, but partly for old association’s sake, and from their natural instinct to honor any man who had brought honor to America.”

Irving declined, and Tammany Hall nominated instead Andrew H. Mickle, who was born in a hut in the “Bloody Sixth” Ward; it was said by his opponents that no less than a dozen pigs were present at the birth and lived with the family for many years.

Nathaniel Hubbard, a contemporary of Mickle’s , claims this is what really happened:

This election was bought of the sachems of Tammany hall, the tobacconist and mother–in-law [Mrs. Russell, the mother of Andrew’s father-in-law] of the incumbent. She sent a letter to the rulers of Tammany with a pledge to give them $5.000 on condition they would nominate and elect her son in law to the office of mayor of this city. The bait was accepted and he was accordingly put in nomination and elected, and the $8,00 promptly paid.

He was a man utterly disqualified for the office of mayor, having been brought up behind the tobacco counter of Mrs. Russell.

Mickle was elected mayor in 1845 and served one term. A few things happened.

Mickle encouraged the construction of a new workhouse and insane asylum, leading eventually to Blackwell’s Island becoming a sort of one-stop for all of New York’s undesirable industries. After the Great Explosion of 1845, Mickle also saw to developing New York’s fire-fighting infrastructure.

Mickle gave $40.00 in the name of Tammany Hall to Irish relief during the Famine.

Mickle returned to the tobacco business in 1847.

In 1848, upon the death of his mother-in-law, Andrew Mickle changed the name of the firm to A. H. Mickle and Sons. He built Bay Lawn, which burned in 1890.

At his death on January 25, 1863, Andrew left a fortune of over a million dollars (perhaps $30,000,000 in 2013 dollars).

Leave a Comment

The Hicksite-Orthodox Split in the Quakers

January 25, 2015 in Lawrence Family, Quakers, Spiritualism No Comments Tags: Elias Hicks, Hicksites, Inner Light, Lawrence Family, Quakers, Spiritualism

The Quakers have not been immune from factionalism and the split affected the Lawrence family in several ways. It speeded their conversion to Episcopalianism, because the prohibition against marrying out was applied to different branches of Quakers.

Divisions of the Religious Society of Friends

Orthodox

Wilburite

Conservative	Conservative Friends

Gurneyite

Gurneyite	Friends United Meeting

Evangelical	Evangelical Friends International

Beaconite

Hicksite

Friends General Conference	Friends General Conference

Wikipedia’s comments seems fair:

During and after the English Civil War (1642–1651) many dissenting Christian groups emerged, including the Seekers and others. A young man named George Fox was dissatisfied by the teachings of the Church of England and non-conformists. He had a revelation that there is one, even, Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition.

Quakers (or Friends, as they refer to themselves) are members of a family of religious movements collectively known as the Religious Society of Friends. The central unifying doctrine of these movements is the priesthood of all believers.

They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional conservative Quaker understandings of Christianity. Unlike many other groups that emerged within Christianity, the Religious Society of Friends has actively tried to avoid creeds and hierarchical structures.

The Hicksite variety influenced the Lawrence family.

Elias Hicks (1748-1830) stressed the role of the Inner Light. “the immediate Communion of the human soul with its Divine Creator and Savior.” as one follower explained it. The Inner Light was equal to or even superior to Scripture:

With the teaching that the Inner Light was on par with the revelation of Jesus from the Bible, Hicksite Quakers removed those boundaries and transformed Quaker religious praxis, distancing it from Bible reading and prayer, and recognizing an ongoing personal reformation through experience in the world. An individual acting in the world could experience Jesus in the same way as someone kneeling in prayer or readng the Bible. Such an understanding tended to minimize the importance of Bible-reading and prayer and sacralized Quaker social action.

Hicks was himself an abolitionist and denounced slavery as the result of war. He wanted to see a boycott of slave-produced goods. This inspired the setting up of stores that sold only products produced by free labor.The first was in Baltimore.

Hicks’s teachings led to a split in the Quakers:

The “great separation” of 1827-28 began in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Approximately two-thirds of members ranged themselves in the group that came to be called “Hicksite,” and emphasized the role of the Inward Light in guiding individual faith and conscience, while the remaining third, eventually known as “Orthodox,” espoused a more Protestant emphasis on Biblical authority and the atonement. Similar schisms rapidly followed in New York, Baltimore, and elsewhere.

The Lawrences did not go in the direction of social activism. In some of them as we shall see, the Hicksite emphasis on the Inner Light fed into Spiritualism. This influence has continued. Mary Coelho, from her Quaker background and from her studies at Union Theological and Fordham, developed her understanding of the Inner Light:

The adults in our Quaker community spoke often of the Inner Light, the seed of God, the indwelling Christ. “It is a Light within, a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us.” The Inner Light might be found in the worshiping community, where it would move a person to speak. The Inner Light might lead a young man to refuse to go to war. It might call someone to alleviate suffering or injustice, and then give them the power to accomplish that task. People testify that through the power of this Light, evil weakens in them and the good is raised up.

For example, a mystical experience at age 29 launched me — rather, hurled and compelled me — into a search that continues to this day. For I had come to know experientially of a powerfully healing and attractive dimension of life not addressed in my science classes. Although not an experience of light, it was an experience of the sacred, and thus closely related to experiences of the Inner Light. I had an inner knowledge, unacceptable as it seems rationally, that what I had known was, in some manner, an answer to humanity’s problems.

I thereby learned to honor the mystical side of Quakerism and to see it as part of a far older tradition that takes as its foundation the experiential side of the religious life. But it was the new story of the evolutionary universe — specifically, the scientific story as translated by Brian Swimme — that enabled me to integrate the manifest, physical world into a dynamic, sacred whole.

It is possible that there are leadings about events not derived from the usual means of communication, although familiarity with a situation through normal means of communication may stimulate an emotional engagement that, in turn, brings forth leadings to address that particular state of affairs. Physicists have, after all, discovered nonlocality, which is action (at the subatomic level) in the absence of local forces. A story told by Jean Shenida Bolen illustrates the kind of nonlocal interconnections in the realm of the individual consciousness that exist in this mysterious world of ours.

As a young child, Jean lived in California with her parents, who were from Japan. On occasion her father would awaken saying that so-and-so back in Japan had died, and that he learned this in a dream. A couple of weeks later, a letter would arrive saying that indeed that person had died at the time her father had known it. How was that knowing, that “leading” possible?

According to M. L. Rowntree, at its best, the Light is the whole self in touch with God and with the universe (quoted in Lucas, p. 16). Such full participation in the universe can bring the individual into leadings that arise outside our local, daily consciousness. The new cosmology gives us confidence that our leadings or callings may go beyond an individual’s isolated ideas, and that a person can be led to actions that do indeed reflect the needs and direction of the larger community and the evolving earth. Likewise, the Quaker idea that refusal of a concern has cosmic consequences finds support in the context of the web of interconnections that is the unfolding whole.

This was the path that Lydia Ann Lawrence (1811-1879), my wife’s third great grandmother, followed.

Leave a Comment

1 2 3 4 5