Cloacina was originally an Etruscan water goddess who was later adopted by the Romans and associated with Venus. She presided over the Cloaca Maxima – the great sewer of Rome and was linked to purification, cleansing, health, and hygiene. She kept the pipes clean.
She is a difficult goddess to track down and has been buried by history, her temple relegated to a drawing in an ancient history text. But perhaps Cloacina has a place with us today. Any homeowner can attest to the stress that a plumbing problem can bring, unless they happen to be a plumber, so why not call upon her to keep the guts of the house running efficiently?
You don’t have to own a home to have digestive issues. Cloacina can help with your own internal plumbing issues as well. Some Cloacina seekers have similarly linked her with mental health and keeping the mind tidy. Offer her sweetened air in the form of incense or candles, bring white flowers into your bathroom, or toss coins into water in her name to win her favor.
Other than being primarily derived from an Etruscan goddess, Cloacina is also sometimes considered an aspect of Salus, goddess of health, wellbeing, and public welfare, the Roman counterpart to the Greek goddess Hygeia.
Hygeia
Hygeia is the goddess of healing powers and medicine, health, cleanliness and sanitation. She is protectress from sickness and dangers. As one of the Asclepiadae, the sons and daughters of the Asclepius the god of medicine, Hygeia is the personification of health and hygiene. She is associated with mistletoe and depicted with a vessel and a snake. Her feast day is May 27th.
Hygeia is easier to find in history and historical studies than Cloacina. Statues of her seemingly offering a potion to the snake that winds around her torso have been made over the centuries in several different art styles, and can be found at colleges of physicians and pharmacy. The Bowl of Hygeia has become the international symbol of pharmacy. She has been painted by Klimt and Rubens.
Similar to Cloacina, Hygeia was linked with Aphrodite (Greek counterpart to the Roman Venus). As the protectress of mental health, she has been linked with Athena. Also similar to Cloacina, her story is unclear. She is sometimes talked of as the wife of Asclepiadae, not his daughter, and the two were on near equal footing in terms of veneration and followers. They represented two aspects of life and health: hygiene and wholeness along with medical miracle.
One in the Same?
I am not a historian of Greek or Roman culture or religion. I am an eager student, but I have noticed in decades of reading about the gods and goddesses of the ancient world, in semesters of college history classes, that the tendency of gods to have near mirror counterparts in other countries was and is a reliable happenstance. The way I first learned it, is that the Roman’s adopted a kind of copy of the Greek god and goddess pantheon, but I have since come to know that it is more complicated than that. To me, Hygeia and Cloacina strike amazingly similar profiles even though they have only tenuously been linked. Could they be two aspects of the same goddess? True counterparts?
Are you in the market for some ancient writings on magic in multiple languages with arresting illustrations and helpful diagrams? I am a sucker for ancient mystery texts, though my interest is far from well researched. So, when the Public Domain Review did a write up on the grimoire of Saint Cyprian, also known as Clavis Inferni (“The Key of Hell”), by Cyprianus, I saved it as a note to myself and possible blog post with the intention of diving deeper into it and its history. That note has been sitting around so long, the time to share it with y’all is now.
Cyprian, was either an intensely evil man or an astoundingly beautiful one. Accounts of the man behind the story vary. However, the name Cyprian became a pseudonym for people who lived on the fringes of society and practiced dark magic (Cvltnation). Cyprian was also linked to the Black School at Wittenberg, which was one of multiple schools in legend that were supposedly run by the Devil himself. Though the promise of secret knowledge was great, students entered the school with the knowledge that a percentage of them would be dragged to hell by the Devil before they could leave (Jason Colavito).
More images from the Clavis Inferni can be browsed at the Wellcome Collection‘s record of the book. And if you, like me, are drawn to old mystery texts, I would also suggest the Grimoire Encyclopedia. It collects links to online copies of ancient grimoires and captures metadata on the history, origins, and authors of the texts.
Jackie Ormes, born Zelda Mavin Jackson to parents William Winifield Jackson and Mary Brown Jackson in 1911, was an American cartoonist, journalist, editor, philanthropist, and ground-breaker . She was the first African American woman creator of a syndicated comic strip. Her comics, Torchy Brown and Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger, depicted strong, intelligent, and fashionable African American women, which was provocative on its own. Ever the innovator, Ormes would also often use her comics to comment on society as well, targeting racial issues and environmental pollution.
Just a year after launching her Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger strip, Ormes had a play doll of her Patty-Jo character produced by the Terri Lee doll company in 1947, just in time for Christmas. Like Torchy, whose comics would often be accompanied with paper doll style wardrobes, Patty-Jo had an upscale wardrobe, and is considered the first black doll on the market that did not depict and enforce racist stereotypes.
“No matter the strip, Ormes was presenting African American women in a way that no other cartoonist in the papers had done previously. Her characters were demure and dynamic, involved in and commenting on current events, sporting the latest fashions. They were upper class women. Torchy in Heartbeats was often accompanied by Torchy Togs, paper dolls of the character with a variety of high-end outfits.”
Ormes continued making art after she retired from creating comics in 1956, and served on the founding board of directors of the DuSable Museum of African-American History and Art. In 2014, 29 years after her death, she was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. In 2018 she was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Industry Eisner Award Hall of Fame.
Jackie Ormes’ “Torchy in Heartbeats”, September 22, 1951, from the Jackie Ormes biographical file, gift of Nancy Goldstein, The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. McGurk, Caitlin (2013) Found in the Collection: Jackie Ormes! (1911-1985). Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Blog. https://library.osu.edu/site/cartoons/2013/02/22/found-in-the-collection-jackie-ormes-1911-1985/
Did I mention my obsessive brainstorming for new research zines; have I said that I was working on a zine for pineapples? Well, beyond finding recipes for wine and vinegar, I have also found that pineapple plants, their leaves specifically, are used to make cloth. In the Phillipines, where most Piña cloth is currently made, it has been used to make the traditional Barong tagalog as well as embroidered kerchiefs and shawls (Wikipedia). The Piña cloth produced in the Phillipines is made via a time consuming manual process. It is often woven with silk to give it a nicer drape. Whether with silk or without, it is an oddly translucent and beautiful cloth.
Until ten years ago, Abby Fisher was known as the first African American woman to publish a cookbook in the United States. The details now known about her life give only the faintest sketch of a woman who worked her way from enslaved cook on the east coast to business owner and author on the west. Much of what we do know was unearthed by Karen Hess, southern cooking historian, who studied Abby Fisher and encouraged the reprinting of her book after a rare copy of Fisher’s book came up for auction (“What Mrs. Fisher Knows About…,” 2021). Because I am a lover of old cookbooks and have been on a hunt for all the fruitcake recipes, and of course Mrs. Fisher had one, I was elated to find Mrs. Fisher’s book online courtesy Michigan State University: https://n2t.net/ark:/85335/m5tt11. I have selected the recipes that look especially interesting to me in order share them here, but do go and check out the whole book!
Abby Fisher was born Abby Clifton to Andrew James, a white farmer of French decent, and Abbie Clifton, an African American, in South Carolina (“Abby Fisher,” 2021). During her research Hess could not find direct evidence that Abby Fisher was born into enslavement, but many have made that assumption based on Fisher’s date and location of birth (Rae, n.d.). An ad for her cookbook in the The San Francisco call from 1897 seems to support this assumption by indicating Abby Fisher was “raised in the family of the late Newton St. John of Mobile, Alabama (“An Excellent Cookery-Book,” 1897). Newton St. John was a prominent merchant and banker in Mobile prior to and after the Civil War. So, it must have been in the St. John kitchen where Abby Fisher first became a cook. Before the beginning of the Civil War, in the 1850s, Fisher met and married Alexander C. Fisher in Mobile (Rae, n.d.). After the Civil War, in 1877, the couple moved to San Francisco (“The African American Women of the Wild West,” n.d.). The 1880 census shows them on Second Street with four of their eleven eventual children. They are both listed as mixed race; Abby was working as a cook while her husband was a pickle and preserves manufacturer (“Abby Fisher,” 2021; “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About…,” 2021).
I returned to tales of the ‘wild west’ and pioneers of the frontier looking for women who may have been cut out of the history books because of their sex, culture, and race. There are no shortage of stories romanticizing the time period, the seeming lawlessness, and the rugged criminal turned hero. They distract us from the many atrocities that were committed as east coast colonists pushed westward, warring with native peoples and decimating the land in order to claim for their own everything between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The harsh and turbulent conditions meant that people had to contend with so much more than we can imagine, sometimes rising in fame because of their business savvy, their integrity, and their resolve. China Mary was just such a person.
Except that she was multiple people. During the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the following legislation that prohibited immigration of Chinese people to the United States, racist actions towards Chinese people in the United States ranged from massacre to seemingly polite acts of diminution (“Chinese Exclusion Act,” 2021). Prior to and despite the prohibitions on immigration from China, many people living in China headed for the U.S. to escape facing violence from civil was between 1840s and 1860s, unemployment, famine and overpopulation of coastal cities. Chinese men often immigrated to the U.S. without their wives and some families in China decided to sell their daughters into prostitution oversees to both avoid starvation and provide the girls with the opportunities a new country may provide (Waggener, 2021). While looking up more information on the woman in Tombstone known as China Mary I came across a couple more, in Wyoming and Alaska, and discovered that Chinese people were often called China Mary or China John to save white people the trouble of learning their real names. I cannot adequately express how much this bothers me. To deny someone their name is ultimately demeaning and terribly cruel; it is an erasure. There are probably thousands of China Marys and China Johns completely lost to history by design. Today I’m going to explore the lives of Sing Choy, Ah Yuen, and Mary Bong, likely not their real names.
Qui Fah or Mary Bong 1880-1958
The woman who would become known as China Mary or Mary Bong in Sitka Alaska was born in Shiqi (Shek Kee 石岐) in Zhongshan 中山 county (“Mary Bong or China Mary,” 2019). From her own reporting to a newspaperman in 1935, she ran away from home at the age of 13 and headed for the United States. Aware of the immigration restrictions facing her, she arrived Canada and stayed in Vancouver until she made friends with Gee Bong, a Sitka resident on a business trip. Her reasons for marrying at the age of 15 were practical, as she recounted to the newspaperman: “I learned that if I were married to a man who had his immigration papers I could get into the U.S. as his wife. I liked my new Chinese friend from Alaska so I married him” (DeArmond, 1994). She helped her husband with his Bakery and Restaurant, where she was dubbed China Mary.
The first African American Woman to practice medicine in the state of Florida
History tends to forget a lot of people for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they were not loud enough, their geographic reach wasn’t considered sufficient, they had no scandal, they were a minority, they were a woman, etc. However, even if their impact didn’t carry their name into the future, they had impact in the lives and history of the people around them. There is little we can do about the people who are completely vanished by time, but we can give the stories of those not quite completely vanished a little more lasting purchase in the collective unconscious. For this month’s foray into history I wanted to learn about someone closer to my home: Dr. Carrie Effie Mitchell-Hampton, the first African American woman to practice medicine in the state of Florida.
Carrie Mitchell was born in Fernandina Beach, just north of Jacksonville in Nassau county. From her age as reported in her obituary, she would have been born around 1894/5, but other researchers have placed her birth at 1886. This 1886 date seems more probable since all sources seem to agree that she entered Meharry Medical School in 1904. If born in 1886, she would have been 18. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Most sources list that Mitchell grew up 130 miles southwest of Fernandina Beach, in Ocala, and that she attended both the Orange Park School for girls and Howard Academy. I assume that the Orange Park School for Girls is actually the Orange Park Normal and Manual Training School in Orange Park, just south of Jacksonville, not far from Fernandina Beach where she was born. Her time in Ocala would have started, then, when she left the greater Jacksonville area and started in Howard Academy. After Howard, she entered Meharry Medical School, in Nashville Tennessee, and graduated in 1908.
Sources don’t seem to agree on the order of what came next. Apparently she was licensed to practice medicine in Florida from 1906 to 1935, but this would have meant she obtained her license before returning to Ocala after graduating from medical school. She also owned and operated a drug store on Broadway street in downtown Ocala. Some sources claim she did this prior to becoming a doctor, but this timing doesn’t fit well with her graduation and her licensing. In 1915 she married a co-alumnus of Meharry Medical School and dentist Dr. Lee Royal Hampton. There is some mention that she gave up one of her businesses when she married. Since she reportedly practiced medicine for thirty, forty, or forty-five years, remaining the only African American woman to practice medicine through the 1920s and 1930s, I would assume that she ceased running her drug store, likely in operation from 1908 to 1915. She quickly filled her free time by helping to found, and then serving as the secretary for, the Florida Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association. She was often a speaker at conventions of medical professionals and was president of the Woman’s Convention in 1955.
The couple lived on Magnolia Street in Ocala while Dr. Carrie Hampton continued her practice, becoming one of Ocala’s most highly respected citizens. Her husband, Dr. L. R. Hampton, died sometime after having practiced dentistry in Ocala for 40 years. Dr. Carrie Hampton died in Halifax Hospital 12/13/1964 at the reported age of 69.
Figure from: Map of Florida According to Latest Authorities. Digital Collections, Tampa Library, University of South Florida. https://theleemsmachine.com/bean/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/mapoffloridaaccordingtolatestauthorities.jpg
Referenced
Colburn, D. R., & Landers, J. (1995). The African American Heritage of Florida. University Press of Florida.
“Dr. Carrie Hampton, Pioneer Negro Doctor” (1964) Tampa Bay Times. December 18.
Gibbons, P. (2016) One man’s war on Florida’s desegregated schools. RedefineED. https://www.redefinedonline.org/2016/09/war-florida-desegregated-private-schools/
‘Negro Speak’ (1936) Tampa Tribune. April 1.
“Other Events” (1955) Tampa Bay Times. October 12th.
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.
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.
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).
