After finishing his book, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, in 1809, the well known and celebrated Dutch historian Deitrich Knickerbocker disappeared from his hotel. He was well-loved by his friends, though described as ‘crusty’ and perhaps a bit disheveled, as he was known for wearing his cropped pants very baggy. The proprietor of the hotel from which Knickerbocker disappeared posted a notice that if he failed to return and pay his bill, the proprietor would publish the manuscript that Knickerbocker left behind.
Another notice attempted to put to rest rumors that Mr. Knickerbocker was a fake and that his manuscript was not authentic. A letter by his close friend, Ludwick Von Bynkerfeldt calls the rumors malicious and driven by envy at the projected success of Knickerbocker’s manuscript. Eventually, public concern grew to an extent that New York city officials began offering a reward for Knickerbocker’s return. This public concern made Knickerbocker’s history, a satire both on histories and the politics of contemporary New York, an immediate success as soon as it was available to the public.
Never before wan an original, first work by a young author received so well with the American public, proclaimed the young author himself, Washington Irving. Yes, Dietrich Knickerbocker was a hoax, perpetrated to gain authorial renown, by the man who would write one of the best spooky American ghost stories. Irving’s ploy worked, though most people today do not remember Washington Irving for A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. He is best remembered for the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But, Irving’s hoax did have a lasting impression on American culture. Baggy-ish cropped pants are called knickerbockers. Knickerbocker is a nickname for Manhattan residents, and the New York Knicks, is actually short for the basketball team’s full name, the New York Knickerbockers.
I came across this fabulous story while preparing for my guest spot discussing all things Sleepy Hollow on Hello! This is the Doomed Show. I am now sad that I did not get to know more of Washington Irving when getting my English degree. I am making plans to remedy that situation.
Valiada Snow was in the papers. Even when journalists didn’t have a scrap to write about her, pictures of her glowing, smiling, singing and generally being gorgeous would show up alongside unrelated articles in the entertainment section. She had sponsorships, showing up in newspaper ads for RC Cola and hair treatments. She traveled the nation and the world, acting, dancing, singing, and playing trumpet.
Snow’s fall from fame and memory has been blamed on the diversity of her talent. If she had only been a torch singer, we would’ve remembered her. If she had only been a dancer, she would’ve made history. If she had only been a trumpet player, modern audiences would know her as well as Louis Armstrong. But Valaida Snow was never only one thing or another. Even within a specialty, her talent was diverse. In one oft reported performance, Snow concluded a number on the trumpet with a dance number where, for each chorus, she danced in a different pair of shoes. “The dances and shoes to match were: soft-shoe, adagio shoes, tap shoes…, Dutch clogs, Chinese straw sandals, Turkish slippers, and the last pair, Russian boots” (Reitz, 1982). Her singing was comparably varied. In addition to torch songs and blues, she was one of the few black entertainers to sing Broadway tunes as well (Mosley, 2020).
The trumpet was Snow’s primary instrument, but she also played cello, bass, violin, guitar, banjo, mandolin, harp, accordion, clarinet, and saxophone (Charles, 1995). She conducted bands, produced shows, designed costumes, spoke seven languages (Cowans, 1943) and was reportedly a fine painter (“Valaida Snow Engagement at Orpheum,” 1946). She could write down music as it was being played (Reitz, 1982). She was also the master fabricator of her own story.
Group of women members of the Tampa Urban League. USF Libraries Digital Collections. https://digital.lib.usf.edu/?b29.14207 Blanche Armwood is top row, first on left
I’ve been enjoying digging through history to find people and stories that deserve a little more study than they tend to get. This month, my personal goal to seek out these amazing people coincided with a professional goal of promoting and providing context to my library’s digital collections. For this ‘Every Month is History Month’ post, and in honor of Black History Month, I am going to refer you away from the Bean to check out my post on Digital Dialogs: Celebrating Black History Month with a Portrait of Blanche Armwood.
Blanche Armwood [was] a prominent figure on the national stage, known for her dedication to education and social reform…[She] has been compared to Booker T. Washington, both by her contemporaries and by historians. Her seeming to accept the white power structure while at the same time working toward interracial cooperation on local issues would later gain her criticism for accommodating whites (Hooper, 2011). Yet, other contemporaries described her as a ‘rebel’ who demanded equal rights and did not ask for favors (Jones, 1999). It could be said that Armwood used the methods she deemed necessary to obtain her goals in any given situation.
The story of Liliuokalani’s reign as the first queen and last monarch of Hawaii is often told from an Anglo-Protestant, U.S. allied, perspective. This is the same perspective as the foreign Hawaiian residents who conspired to take her crown away. Sympathetic articles in U.S. newspapers during the shift of power in Hawaii and internet history articles of today gloss over the events that culminated in her removal and imprisonment, making it seem, in my opinion, as though Liliuokalani could be partially responsible in any way for the disintegration of the Hawaiian monarchy. Thankfully, Liliuokalani herself gave us a history from her own perspective that fills in gaps we wouldn’t have known were there.
Before we can truly make sense of the sequence of events that deposed Liliuokalani and helped make Hawaii part of the United States of America, we have to start before her reign with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, established in the U.S. in 1810, that was peopled with a group of young protestant descendants of the founding Puritan families. From this board the first Congregationalist mission to the Hawaiian Islands arrived in 1820, and began establishing an expatriate community, as was their modus operandi. There already existed in Hawaii an established European presence at this time which bolstered the protestant mission to preach, convert, and intrinsically change societal and cultural norms (Ward, 2019). This was the world in which Liliuokalani grew up. She attended a ‘Royal School,’ dedicated to educating children from royal families, high ranking chiefs, and those with claims to the throne, which was run by missionaries sent to the islands by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Liliuokalani, 1898).
Long before she would know for sure that she was in line for the throne, the islands had been temporarily taken by the British in a skirmish with the Americans, after which power was ‘restored’ to the Kamehameha Dynasty (Ward, 2019). The earliest constitution in Hawaii was delivered by the King in 1840 and revised in 1852 after the above interruption to royal power. Liliuokalani surmises that both constitution drafts were likely heavily influenced by the missionaries on the island, but both of these were delivered of the King’s own volition (Liliuokalani, 1898). The foreign residents of the islands were also becoming deeply embedded in the King’s cabinet, government, and were acting as advisers in several capacities. So it was remarkable, at least to Liliuokalani, that King Kamehameha V refused to take the oath to maintain the current constitution upon his ascendancy, abrogated the constitution of 1852 and, after an unsuccessful constitutional convention, wrote his own. This example of royal leadership seemed to have a deep impact on Liliuokalani, who wrote “it is presumable, therefore, that he understood the needs of his people better than those of foreign birth and alien affinities” (Liliuokalani, 1898). The new constitution served the Hawaiian people for twenty three years during a period of increasing prosperity where all the island residents seemed to live in harmony.
Liliuokalani in her book, Hawaii’s History by Hawaii’s Queen (1898), draws attention to how traditional Hawaiian culture was different to the culture of the foreign residents, and to the transforming culture of the islands during her life. She describes a system where the King and his people interacted through an exchange not unlike that of an extended family. The King, as the head of the family, had a house available to him in all parts of his domain and food for his table supplied by the people. The people, in return had their needs taken care of by the King through his retinue of overseers. There were no payments to the people for services to the King and no taxes on the people to support the state. All lands and property ruled by the King belonged to the King and were apportioned to those that needed it for the duration of need. This clashed with the ideals and values of the second generation white residents on the island, and has been pinpointed as an underlying reason that the American missionaries and plantation owners sought more governmental control (Ward, 2019). While Liliuokalani was abroad for Queen Victoria’s jubilee celebration, she and her party received word of a revolutionary movement against the King that would thereafter be known as the Bayonet Constitution. As Liliuokalani described it:
“For many years our sovereigns had welcomed the advice of, and given full representations in their government and councils to, American residents who had cast in their lot with our people, and established industries on the Islands. As they became wealthy, and acquired titles to lands through the simplicity of our people and their ignorance of values and of the new land laws, their greed and their love of power proportionately increased; and schemes for aggrandizing themselves still further, or for avoiding the obligations which they had incurred to us, began to occupy their minds.” [and] “without any provocation on the part of the king, having matured their plans in secret, the men of foreign birth rose one day en masse, called a public meeting, and forced the king, without any appeal to the suffrages of the people, to sign a constitution of their own preparation, a document which deprived the sovereign of all power, made him a mere tool in their hands, and practically took away the franchise from the Hawaiian race. This constitution was never in any way ratified, either by the people, or by their representatives.”
(Liliuokalani, 1898)
The Bayonet Constitution removed power from the monarchy and mandated that only people of certain ethnicities, literacy, and land ownership could vote, disenfranchising many Asian residents and Hawaiian citizens, while at the same time ensuring that only wealthy non-citizen residents (just 3% of the population) could stand for election to office (Hugo, 2017; Borch, 2014). When Liliuokalani inherited the throne, she received petitions from all over the islands to draft a new constitution, and, taking the example of King Kamehameha V, she announced that she intended a revision (Liliuokalani, 1898). A coterie of men lead by Sanford Dole, cousin to James Dole who would later start the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, formed a league to restore and maintain the ill-gotten constitutional government and, with the help of the American military, overthrew the monarchy (“Ex-Queen,” 1917; Hugo, 2017). Sanford Dole became president of this new Republic of Hawaii.
Not long after the provisional government was established, Hawaiians loyal to the Queen attempted a counter coup that inspired Dole to establish military law. All ‘royalists’ were rounded up and tried by a tribunal in ‘batches’ to save time. After thirty five days, 191 people had been tried, most found guilty, and some sentenced to hang (Borch, 2014). Liliuokalani acquiesced to pressure that she sign a formal abdication in order to bring an end to the trials, but the trials did not stop, and she was brought before the tribunal under charges of ‘misprision of treason.’ She was found guilty and imprisoned, though her sentence and those of other ‘royalists’ were commuted the next day by President Dole to lesser punishments. No hangings were ever carried out. Liliuokalani was confined to a small room in her former palace for eight months after which she was released to her private residence on house arrest for an additional year (Borch, 2014). Hawaii was annexed to the United States later, under President McKinley, the same year the U.S. gained control of Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.
In her book, Liliuokalani writes of her childhood and of Hawaiian culture and the succession of Kings, though most of the material seems aimed at providing a complete backstory to her reign and her perspective to the foreign greed and love of power that unmade her homeland. After she was allowed to travel freely, Liliuokalani, with Princess Ka’iulani, turned their efforts to obtaining voting rights for the Hawaiian people (Hulstrand, 2009). After Ka’iulani’s death, Liliuokalani withdrew from public life and lived quietly until her death at the age of 79 (“Liliuokalani,” 2009). In addition to her own history of her life, she wrote several songs, one of which remains well known to this day: “Aloha Oe,” translated as “Farewell to Thee” (Hugo, 2017).
REFERENCES
Borch, F. L. (2014). The Trial by Military Commission of Queen Liliuokalani. Army Lawyer, 2014(8), 1–3.
Ward, Christina. (2019) American Advertising Cookbooks: how corporations taught us to love spam, bananas, and jell-o. Process Media: Port Townsend, WA.
The long marbled bar of the Soda Fountain still stands sturdy beneath the elbows of the cool kids even if there aren’t quite as many around now as there used to be. It may still even be possible to order an egg cream, but I’m betting that none of my friends have ever tried one. In 1920s and 30s New York they were all the rage. People still debate over who invented the egg cream, but back in the day the real news was who controlled it.
Aerial view of interior of People’s Drug Store, 7th and E Streets, Washington, D.C., with soda fountain. 1909-1932. National Photo Company Collection. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2001701732/
An egg cream was a cheap alternative to the ice cream most folks couldn’t afford during the the Great Depression. It has three main ingredients: milk, chocolate syrup, and seltzer or effervescent soda. No eggs and no cream, in case you didn’t know. A man who could control one of those ingredients, like the syrup for instance, could make a fortune off the backs of the soda fountain owners. Harry Solomon Dolowich decided he was going to be that man.
Dolowich had grown up as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants in the Lower East Side. His family’s initial poverty and hard times eventually turned around as both Harry and his brother obtained their law degrees and established their careers. Harry Dolowich was known for his silver tongue; he was mentioned in his year book as someone who could talk anyone into anything. He was also evidently good at making and keeping connections. One of the most important was obtained by marrying the niece of a large chocolate syrup manufacturer. Dolowich managed to talk his uncle into getting in on the ground level of an association that would divide up customers to control and improve profits while simultaneously cutting out competition. With connections in the Health Department and other big syrup companies signing on, Dolowich was setting himself up as the most powerful man in chocolate syrup.
At the time more than fifty industries in New York had been taken over by racketeers, including artichokes, fish, laundry, funeral parlors, movie theaters, grapes, and tailors. The idea was to organize control over an industry by creating an alliance of enough business owners to pressure other smaller outfits into falling in line. A business could either be a member or not have a business. Hard time befell the the businessman who tried to find a third option. Members would agree to inflated and fixed costs for their product, creating a no competition environment.
Dolowich followed this model, charging membership fees and truck fees, making sure non-compliant businesses received hefty fines and closure notices from the Department of Health, and sending out ‘dead wagons.’ Dolowich’s dead wagons were the final method of persuasion for errant chocolate syrup makers and distributors. Trucks loaded up with the same syrup at a fraction of the cost would flood the territory of the struggling business and steal all the custom.
Of course, Dolowich’s empire eventually crumbled under a lengthy and dramatic investigation. Dolowich served a short prison sentence and then moved states. So, the next time you grab that chocolate syrup for your milk or to drizzle over your ice cream, you can enjoy it knowing that it is no longer being used to crush small business owners.
Wills, Matthew (2016) The Egg Cream Mob: What’s in an egg cream? No eggs. No cream. And a dose of mafia history. JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/egg-cream-mob/
The people we know as the Pilgrims were far from the first Europeans to set foot on or colonize the land later incorporated into the United States. Explorers, fishermen, fur traders, missionaries, and treasure seekers had all been here. European and Native American interactions prior to and contemporary with that of the Pilgrims ranged between aggressive and friendly. However generously the native people sometimes viewed European invaders, Europeans arrived to exploit natural resources, claim land that belonged to native peoples, and bring disease against which the native population had no immunity.
By uncredited – Baharris.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38941602
By The German Kali Works, New York – Bricker, Garland Armor. The Teaching of Agriculture in the High School. New York: Macmillan, 1911. Page 112., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6767475
By Sculptor Cyrus E. Dallin (1861-1944). – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4143607
At times, Europeans came to enslave. Tisquantum, often called Squanto, was kidnapped by an English explorer who took him to Spain to be sold into slavery. He was ‘bought’ by Spanish monks whose work included educating and evangelizing those they perceived as lesser. When Tisquantum finally escaped and returned to his home lands, by way of England, he found that his whole tribe had been killed by an epidemic infection likely brought to the land by the rats of European ships. Tisquantum was the last of the Patuxets.
Tisquantum was living among the Pokanoket tribe, part of a confederation of tribes called the Wampanoag, when the Pilgrims first emerged from wintering on the Mayflower. Samoset, an Abenaki Sagamore was also staying with the Pokanoket tribe at the time. Samoset had learned the English language from fishermen who frequented the waters of Maine, near the lands of the Abenaki people. He approached the Pilgrims to initiate trade relations, and would later arrange the meetings of the Pilgrim colonists with Tisquantum and Ousamequin, also known as Massasoit.
My house has been doing a lot of non-cable watching. We have a few subscription streaming channels through a Roku stick: PBS, BritBox, and Shudder, and we have been spending quite a bit of time finding interesting programming on YouTube. One of our recent obsessions is Aerial America. Aerial America takes you on a history tour of each US state, showing the landscape, monuments, and urban scenes from the air with over-narration that tells the story of the state. There are several full episodes available on Smithsonian’s YouTube channel.
What I find most refreshing and a little depressing is the frankness with which the history is delivered. If, like me, you thought you were pretty well informed about how horribly the United States treated Native Americans, Aerial America will tell you all the horrible massacres and broken treaties you didn’t know about. If you enjoy seeing the natural beauty and vast vistas that we are lucky to have in the US, Aerial America will show you fracking, strip mining, and logging operations. I wouldn’t say this to discourage anyone from enjoying the show. I love it, it has beauty, moments of pride and triumph, and it balances this with the dirty little secrets that underpin a lot of our history. I highly recommend it.
The mention of “Voudoo Queen” will immediately bring to mind the formidable character of Marie Laveau, if it brings to mind anyone. Yet, Marie Laveau was not the only Voudoo Queen to preside over Voudoo practitioners in New Orleans. In 1869, news stories syndicated all over the country told about the naming of a new Voudoo Queen, a successor to Laveau. This woman was Malvina Latour.
Before going on much further, I feel compelled to say that the newspaper pieces that reported often on Voudoo culture between the 1860s and the 1910s were sensational and exaggerated. The aim of these news items appeared, to me, to be twofold: arouse excitement and curiosity in the public while at the same time demean black Americans by casting them as savages and animals. Some journalists were more respectful than others, but all the stories seem to share the perspective that Voudoo, and those that practice it, are some kind of mysterious other; something to be gawped at instead of understood. Knowing this, it is hard enough picking through the historical documentation to find truth. Historians of New Orleans have commented on how difficult it is to separate the truth from legend when studying the lives of people like Marie Laveau. With sensationalist news articles standing in as primary sources, we may simply have to accept that no story will be wholly substantiated.
Note: the spelling Voudoo was chosen for this post based on the spelling of the historical articles referenced for information.
Life of Malvina Latour
The first newspaper stories I could find that mention Malvina Latour show up around 1869 when she was said to succeed Marie Laveau as Queen of the Voudoos in New Orleans. An 1884 article by a reporter for the New Orleans Times-Democrat describes Malvina Latour as a handsome woman of mixed race around 48 years of age. This would mean Malvina Latour was born about 1836 and succeeded Marie Laveau when she was in her early 30s. Though the newspaper articles do not usually mention Marie Laveau’s daughter, Marie Laveau II, historians have pointed out that Laveau II was around and held quite a bit of power herself at this time, though she did not succeed her mother as Queen.
In 1886 Malvina Latour was again named as Laveau’s successor by another reporter, George Washington Cable, who had visited with Laveau before her death in 1881. Cable gave the conflicting information that the title of Voudoo Queen was held until death, and that only in 1881 did Malvina Latour take on the responsibilities. Other historians and legend makers have postulated that Malvina Latour herself was one of Marie Laveau’s daughters. Latour was sometimes referred to as Laveau or Laveau II. Confusing the three women fed Marie Laveau’s legend by lengthening her time in power to an unbelievable spans.
Yet, Malvina Latour peeks through history. Often described, young and old, as sporting a blue calico dress with white polka-dots, Latour would be Queen of the Voudoos, leading St. John’s Eve celebrations on the banks of Lake Ponchartrain, for around two decades. She was regarded as powerful as Laveau, and had performed feats that equaled those of her predecessor, though reportedly she did not add anything new to the practice while Voudoo Queen. According to many, Latour’s primary goal was to remove Catholicism and Catholic practices from Voudoo. She was unsuccessful at this and also at holding the Voudoo community together in the face of many different bids for power. Under Latour, Voudoo in New Orleans split into several factions, never to be reunited. Latour’s eventual abdication and later life are a mystery.
The St. John’s Eve celebrations of 1884 were located between Milneburg and the old Spanish Fort on the banks of Lake Ponchartrain. N Milneburg in front of Bird Cage Cottage. unknown. 1923
Truth, Legend, & Mystery
Carolyn Morrow Long, author of A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau, postulates that the New Orleans Times-Democrat reporter in 1884 may have invented Malvina Latour. Long bases her hypothesis on not being able to find Latour in any church, city or census records, and indicates that the invention of Latour was “indicative of how such sensational accounts came to be regarded as historical and factual.” Yet, the 1886 piece by George Washington Cable that also reported Latour as the successor to Laveau, was apparently unconnected with the previous journalist, revolving around an interview and visit with the aging Laveau. This, to me, serves more as corroboration of Latour’s existence since Cable’s article did not rehash the same stories and visuals of previous articles the way that most newspaper articles of the time seemed to do. I also have spent several hours searching for links in my family tree during the middle and late 1800s that were not recorded by census, church, or city records, so it does not seem strange to me that Latour is not mentioned in these documents.
Though I cannot immediately accept that Latour was a fiction, Long was making an excellent point that the legend of the Voudoo Queen has grown beyond the truth. This becomes evident when faced with obviously conflicting information like the interview with Dr. J. B. Bass of New York, in the Chicago Daily Tribune of 1881. Dr. Bass was a known Voudoo practitioner and had met Laveau when he was a teenager. He asserted that there was no such office as Queen within the order; that Laveau was a mother in the order and had respect, but held no official office. Could this be chalked up to the unique and independent way New Orleans Voudoo has evolved over time, where in the city Laveau and Latour were Queens, but in the worldwide Voudoo community, they held no such office? A later article recounting St. John’s Eve celebrations in 1890 includes recounted testimony from Marie Laveau’s daughter, perhaps Laveau II, refuting that Laveau was ever connected with Voudoo at all. Who then did Latour succeed?
As an illustration of how legend can take over our popular history Malvina Latour has since been linked to the ghost story of a violet eyed zombie girl whose prison was broken by hurricane Katrina and now roams about New Orleans. Though the best guesses at Latour’s possible birth and death dates are so far away from overlapping with her supposed role in the story, the story serves as an interesting example of how our own sensationalism can replace our history.
Gordon, Michelle Y. (2012) “Midnight Scenes and Orgies”: Public Narratives of Voodoo in New Orleans and Nineteenth-Century Discourses of White Supremacy, American Quarterly; College Park Vol. 64, Iss. 4, (Dec 2012): 767-786,914.
?Hearns? (1884). Voudou dance; revival on the lake shore of the voudou mysteries: Description of the celebration of the Eve of St. John by creole voodoo queen Malvina Latour and her attendants in New Orleans Louisiana. . Times Democrat (New Orleans. LA. Louisiana Digital Library (Louisana Works Progress Administration. Louisiana Digital Library. https://louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/state-lwp%3A8520
Black Maria (pronounced like Mariah or muh-rye-uh) is a bit of old slang for a police van that might be familiar to those who indulge in British period mysteries, though it has been out of use for many years. Many people over hundreds of years have pondered the origination of the slang and many have landed upon the same old story of Maria Lee.
Maria Lee
Maria Lee was an African American proprietress of a boardinghouse for sailors in colonial Boston, though at least one account places her in the early 1800s. She was described as being very large, strong, and energetic. She became indispensable to the Boston police force of the time for her help handling especially rowdy individuals. An oft repeated anecdote describes Maria Lee single-handedly hauling three boisterous sailors into the police station when they were causing a disturbance at her boardinghouse. For the police at the time, calling for Black Maria meant bringing in back up to take a law-breaker to jail. When police vans came about, originally large boxy horse drawn wagons, they were painted black and christened with the name Black Maria in honor of the lady who first was called to carry in the prisoners.
This story has been repeated in several periodical and newspaper publications as a bit of interesting trivia on the origination of the slang. One 1937 article added the embellishment that Maria Lee was knifed in the back by a Chinese sailor during a fight and would subsequently be carried to the morgue in the van that bore her name (The Midland Journal). Before moving into my own investigations on this particular story of Black Maria, I wanted to give some consideration for the primary dissenting opinion I found, given by Reverend H. Harbaugh in 1859. Harbaugh rejected the idea that the police Black Maria was named after an African American woman. Instead he postulated that the name Maria was adopted due to the Hebrew meaning for Mary/Maria, bitterness, and how criminals, conveyed in such a manner, would be set upon by a black cloud of bitterness (Historically Speaking). I find this theory to be much more far fetched than the idea that the van would have been named after a person. I am no scholar of slang, but I have encountered little to no slang based on something as scholarly as the Hebrew meaning behind naming conventions. Slang often erupts from the average Joe, for communicating with the average Joe. I could be wrong, but I don’t imagine the average Joe police officer of either colonial or 1800s Boston was communicating with his fellows using Hebrew meanings behind common names.
Returning to the story of the colonial boarding house proprietress, I could not find any mention of her any further back than 1849 which talked of same legend that was later repeated (Notes and Queries). Instead, I looked for plausibility that 1. a free African American woman was running a business in colonial Boston, 2. the police force and subsequent vans would’ve occurred at similar time, and 3. there was any possibility of a Chinese sailor during the same time.
When I tried out for band at the end of my fourth grade year, I wanted to play the trumpet or the flute, but the highschool band counselor they had brought in to help us choose our instruments said my mouth was all wrong for those. They recommended the clarinet, and, after a short period of normal child disappointment, I embraced my instrument. Through learning the clarinet I found Swing, Big Band, and the ‘Hot’ Jazz of the early 1900s. I wanted to play like Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw. The lingering feelings of my youth still lead me down roads of early jazz history. Recently, I had the opportunity to explore my library’s African American Sheet Music collection while creating an exhibit called Swing Along! But, other than the torch singers whose music I collected, I didn’t see many women. I am looking for them now, and want to …
Celebrate Blanche Calloway
The Detroit tribune. (Detroit, Mich.), 29 Feb. 1936. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn92063852/1936-02-29/ed-1/seq-6/>
Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 02 June 1936. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1936-06-02/ed-1/seq-38/>
Blanche Calloway, sister of band leader Cab Calloway, demonstrates how to apply cosmetics made especially for black people in Miami, Florida on July 30, 1969. Her Miami business bas boomed from a small firm to a growing national market in less than a year. The model is Sylvia Dobson. (AP Photo/JPK)
Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.), 22 Nov. 1930. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025841/1930-11-22/ed-1/seq-16/>
Blanche Calloway was a flamboyant performer, singer, dancer, business woman, and the first woman to lead an all male orchestra. She is relentlessly written about as residing in the shadow of her younger brother Cab Calloway. However, scholars and researchers have pointed out that, at one point, Blanche Calloway had attained more fame and renown, helping her brother in his show business breakthrough and inspiring his famous style (Wikipedia; Handy, 1998)
My head has been full of the myriad of terrible stuff in our world; stuff that is not new, but that Covid-19 has placed a magnifying glass over and lit fire to stress and hardships that had been slowly baking under the surface of our everyday USA. And I have been wanting to celebrate something good, because there are still good things out there and good people. We cannot turn away from the terrible stuff, we cannot pretend it is not there, but we can show it something better.
Today, I am celebrating Mary Fields: a pioneer, a mail carrier, a woman, and an African American.
Mary Fields, author unknown
Mary Fields and the Cascade baseball team. Photo courtesy Wedsworth Memorial Library, Cascade, Montana
As pictured in Cooper, Gary & Crawford, Marc. (1959) Stage Coach Mary: Gun-toting Montanan delivered U.S. mail. Ebony magazine. October 1st
I am not original when declaring that there is something fascinating about the wild west. In my youth, I became obsessed with stories of western pioneers and nere-do-wells after reading Doc Holiday by John Myers Myers. What I didn’t find a lot of in those stories were women or African Americans. Rodger Hardaway, a scholar working in the niche field focusing on African American Women in the west postulates that the small percentage of African Americans out west, and even smaller percentage of women to men leads to a lack of historical treatment. I’d postulate that the prejudices that keep our history books full of white men might have something to do with it as well.
Mary Fields was an independent and powerful woman. Born before the Civil War, she was enslaved to the Warren family in either West Virginia or Arkansas. After emancipation Mary Fields took chamber maid and laundress jobs on steam ships traveling up the Mississippi. It was on the river that she met Judge Dunne, according to one source (Hanshew, 2014). Other sources say Fields first made acquaintance with the Dunne family when one of the Warner family’s daughters married a Dunne (Reindle, 2010). However they met, Fields would take a position among the Dunne family household staff.
When Judge Dunne’s wife died, Mary Fields took his five children to his sister, Mother Mary Amadeus, at the Ursuline convent in Toledo Ohio (Wikipedia). Mother Mary Amadeus asked her to stay and work for the convent. There, Fields earned herself a reputation for being hard working, argumentative, and loyal. She enjoyed a good drink, a cigar, and took to wearing men’s jackets and boots. Field’s employment at the convent in Toledo seems to have been a comfortable arrangement even though the girls at the convent school were reportedly afraid of her wrath should they tread on her freshly cut lawn. Fields only left when Mother Amadeus, who had been sent to Montana to establish a mission, fell ill with pneumonia.
Fields nursed her friend back to health in Montana and then took on many of the same duties at St. Peter’s Mission that she had carried out in Toledo, though possibly without pay. Fields’ happy arrangement with the nuns of St. Peter’s came to an end when Fields and a hired man drew guns on each other in a dispute. This was the last straw for the bishop who had already heard stories of her cussing, drinking, smoking, and wearing men’s clothing. He ordered her to be dismissed from the convent.
Possibly with the help of Mother Amadeus, Fields set herself up in nearby Cascade and opened a restaurant that quickly folded due to her not charging cash strapped patrons. After doing sundry odd jobs Mary Fields won a Star Route contract with the US Post Office because she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses (Wikipedia). She was only the second woman to be employed as a carrier by the postal service and the first African American woman.
Already in her sixties, Fields would carry the mail between the Cascade train depot and St. Peter’s Mission for two four-year contracts. She acquired the nickname “Stagecoach” Mary for her reliability. She never missed a day. When the snow was too deep to pull the stagecoach through, she donned snow shoes and carried the mail herself. When the coach was overturned she paced in the cold to keep from freezing, and protected her cargo, horses, and mule from roaming wolves. Fields embodied the mission of the post office. She traveled through rain, sleet, and snow to deliver precious supplies and communication. The internet has made it easy today to overlook the great history and service of the US Post Office even as it supplies us in this pandemic and looks toward an uncertain future (Murse, 2020).
While carrying the mail, Fields became so beloved by the people of Cascade that they rebuilt the laundry service she started in retirement after it burned to the ground. She also ate for free at the local restaurant, and was given a special dispensation by the Mayor to drink in the saloons when women were no longer allowed to do so. Gary Cooper, also of Cascade, remembered her fondly in a piece he related for Ebony magazine in 1959. Cooper told of how she babysat most of the children in town, spending most of her earnings from childcare on candy and treats for the children. She was made the mascot of the baseball team for her tireless devotion and providing bouquets and boutonnieres to the star players from her own garden.
Stories of her exploits, like punching a man down in the street who had not paid his laundry bill, paint a picture of a woman who was larger than life. She was also six feet tall and, according to some, over 200 pounds. But I wonder if just under the surface is the story of a lonely woman as well. Fields never married, she socialized with men, and was the only African American in Cascade. As pointed out by her autobiographer, a subtle racism could have made her an outsider even as she was embraced by the people of Cascade (Hanshew, 2014). Fields left no written record of her own view point, so we may never know the personal thoughts and feelings of this legendary woman.
The archivist at the Ursuline Convent in Toledo mentioned that most inquiries about Mary Fields happen around Black History Month (Reindl, 2010) and the dates on many of the articles I found corroborated this. It’s sad that we restrict our appreciation of underrepresented citizens to one month a year. I say that this month is African American History Month and every month should be African American History Month; every month should be Women’s History Month; every month LGBTQ+ History Month; every month Native American Heritage Month. After all, our history books have taught us that every month has always been White History Month, yes?
Hardaway, Rodger D. “AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMEN ON THE WESTERN FRONTIER.” Negro History Bulletin, vol. 60, no. 1, Jan. 1997, pp. 11–12., www.jstor.org/stable/24766796.
Long ago I was often inspired to do crazy research on passing thoughts and ideas. Smelling Books and Chromolithography and the mystery of Henri and Anita LeRoy, on why certain books smell the way they do and who was really the artist behind common chromolithography prints, respectively, are past products of my ardent desires to answer a question. It’s been a long time since I’ve given myself time to fall down that rabbit hole, but I am feeling the inclination once again. I have a list of curiosities I wanted to return to. Melusine is on that list. For better, or worse, I’ve only geared up to capsule research. The ridiculously extensive posts may still come.
By Heinrich Vogeler – http://www.worpswede.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Heinrich_Vogeler_Melusine.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23490529
The story of Melusine is a fairy tale legend wherein a fairy queen and the king of Scotland had a daughter. Melusine angered her fairy queen mother by imprisoning her father and was cursed to turn into a half-snake beast on Saturdays. Her beast form is often depicted as a two tailed mermaid or something more akin to a naga, a creature from Hindu mythology that has the bottom half of a cobra.
I could not find any more food to feed my passing thought that Melusine is a rogue Naga Kanya, if the Naga Kanya are in fact an entire race of fairy creatures instead of one. I did find that several pinterest boards have noticed the similarity in the two tailed stone depictions of Melusine and those of the fertility goddess Sheela Na Gig. These similarities intrigue me. While poking around in the easily locate-able online sources, I did find that stories of a half serpent, half beautiful woman can be found across Albania, Germany, and France.
In the most well known story from France, Melusine married a nobleman and brought agricultural advances and fortune to the people over which he ruled. But, curiosity became too much for her husband, leading him to break the promise he made to leave her in seclusion on Saturdays. He spied on her, witnessing her changed form. Upon learning of this, Melusine sprouted wings and flew away, never to return (British Library – European Studies Blog).
Most interesting is how, before her husband’s transgression and her disappearance, Melusine bore several sons, making her a founding mother of European nobility. This fairy lineage would eventually be referred to as dragon blood, referencing Melusine’s final winged form. Of course, her split serpent tales has become familiar to many of us as an image of the commercial depiction of Starbuck (Ancient Origins).
Woman Shopper In A Tampa Grocery Story by Robertson Fresh Photography, Digital Collections, Tampa Library, University of South Florida, https://digital.lib.usf.edu/?r5.15958
I have been digging deep into the history of my 1949 house, which invariably means learning all about everything around it, that is, Tampa. Thankfully, I work at a library with digitized pictures and historical documentation to keep me busy for a long time. I can’t tell you exactly why I love this picture. It could be the cans of Heinz Macaroni above the Heinz Spaghetti…also canned.
It could be the largest cans, also of the healthiest seeming products, that is, turnip greens and the like, are perched precariously at the tippy top. Whatever it is, I think it is important to share this wonderful photo of a lady shopper.
I thought that I was a fan of Mark Twain’s work, though I would usually specify that I enjoyed his essays and sketches more than the novels he is typically known for. I have to admit, I am not a very good fan, perhaps of anything, because it never occurred to me to find out any more. I never knew that while working as a typesetting apprentice on his older brother’s newspaper he began penning humorous stories under pseudonyms, or that he would continue this pseudonymous writing on other papers. I knew that Mark Twain was a pseudonym, but I never knew that it was simply a later and greater pseudonym that followed: W. Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins, W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab, Rambler, grumbler, Peter Pencilcase’s Son, John Snooks, and Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, and A Dog-Be-Deviled Citizen… A curious and, perhaps tenacious, view through Chronicling America can call up some of these early articles (example left from the Hannibal Journal September 16, 1852).
My fandom was renewed recently when reading Kipling’s account of searching out and meeting Mr. Samuel Clemens in his 1890 ‘Letter Twenty: Rudyard Kipling on Mark Twain’ in Kipling’s America: Travel Letters, 1889-1895. Of course their conversation turned to copyright as it was one of Mr. Clemens’ favorite topics of the time. Of course this is what I was looking for, as it is one of my favorite topics now.
For those of you who, like me, may want to improve their fandom of Mark Twain I highly recommend the PBS Documentary.
I thought that I was a fan of Mark Twain’s work, though I would usually specify that I enjoyed his essays and sketches more than the novels he is typically known for. I have to admit, I am not a very good fan, perhaps of anything, because it never occurred to me to find out any more. I never knew that while working as a typesetting apprentice on his older brother’s newspaper he began penning humorous stories under pseudonyms, or that he would continue this pseudonymous writing on other papers. I knew that Mark Twain was a pseudonym, but I never knew that it was simply a later and greater pseudonym that followed: W. Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins, W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab, Rambler, grumbler, Peter Pencilcase’s Son, John Snooks, and Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, and A Dog-Be-Deviled Citizen… A curious and, perhaps tenacious, view through