Walking the Berkshires

Red Tape and Black Marks; A War Widow's Pension Claim: 1922

My Gr-gr-great grandfather, William Taylor, served briefly in the Union cavalry at the outbreak of the Civil War before a fall from a horse rendered him unfit for service.  He died from complications of his disability in 1864.  In 1922, his destitute widow was still without a pension.  The extraordinary file I discovered in the National Archives on her survivor's claim has been a boon for me as a family historian, but it is also the record of an illiterate and impoverished widow struggling unsuccessfully with government bureaucracy unmoved by her plight.

This colorized tintype was among my Grandmother Clara Livingston Abbott's effects and identified by her as Great Grandfather Taylor.  The shell jacket and early war pattern Hardee Hat with crossed sabers identifies him as a cavalryman, and my grandmother's people were from Newburgh, New York.  Determining that his name was William Taylor ,and a search of Civil War Muster Rolls from New York while on a trip to Washington in 2000, produced his brief service record.

Private William Taylor was mustered into Company A, 1st NY "Lincoln" Cavalry on July 27th, 1861 in New York City. This was the first volunteer cavalry regiment accepted into US service during the Civil War.  He was 32 years old, a recent  immigrant from England and a weaver by trade with a wife and three small children.  Like many volunteers in the Union cavalry, he may not have known how to ride.

In September, while riding at Camp Meigs in Washington, Pvt. Taylor was thrown from his mount and landed hard on stony ground, causing internal injuries.  After what must have been three weeks of agony in hospital, he was discharged for disability in early October, 1861.  The examining surgeon certified that he was incapable of performing the duties of a soldier because of "spinal irritation, produced by an injury of the spine" and thought "probably several months must elapse before his recovery, though his injuries are not likely to prove permanent."

Despite the surgeon's assessment, Pvt. Taylor's wife Eliza Carter Taylor's 1905 affidavit in the pension files describes more severe and lasting disabilities: 

"When he was in the service,he was thrown from a horse and injured his back and kidneys so as to cause bleeding from the rectum.  Being in a very weakened state, he contracted Typhoid fever from which he died.  He left four small children."

The family had by then moved to Roxbury, now a part of Boston, Massachusetts, and the City Registrar provided a record of his death, November 26, 1864, with "bleeding from the bowels" listed as the cause.  His injuries apparently did not prevent his siring a fourth child born the year before, but typhoid could easily have been aggravated by a weakened constitution and the rectal bleeding is consistent with the internal damage he had previously sustained.  As will be seen, however, this evidence was deemed far from conclusive by the examining authorities considering Eliza Taylor's pension applications.

The General Pension Act of 1862 provided Union veterans and their surviving Dependants benefits based on rank, degree of disability, and term of service.  This act and its subsequent renewals placed a high burden of proof on applicants to show proof of enlistment, that their injuries or disabilities were related to wartime service, that they were of sober habits and, if widowed, had neither remarried nor been living in notorious cohabitation.  With nearly 2 million Union veterans added to the rolls during the Civil War, the amount of paperwork and documentation involved was extraordinary and a great bureaucracy arose around pensions which included a new building for the Bureau of Pensions (completed in 1887), lawyers who specialized in veterans' claims, and organizations like the Grand Army of the Republic which advocated for increased veterans benefits.

As the decades passed, veterans benefits did expand.  Those whose disabilities prevented them from performing manual labor were deemed eligible for veterans pension under the Dependant Pension Act of 1890, and many new applicants filed (a Gr-gr-great Uncle, Theodore Abbott of the 9th NY "Hawkins Zouaves" among them).  Term of service remained a key limitation, and Pvt. Taylor's less than 90 days in the "Lincoln" Cavalry prevented his wife and children from applying for a pension during the rest of the 19th century.

Eliza Taylor lived with her son, William, for the rest of her life.  She moved with him to New  Windsor, now part of Newburgh, then followed him back to Boston for another seven years before returning to Newburgh where her daughter Clara (standing next to her mother at right) met and married my Great-gr-grandfather Walter Livingston - the bearer of an ancient name but not of fortune.  These were struggling, working class people but well thought of in the Newburgh community, which as it turned out was a critically important to Eliza Taylor when seeking testimonials as to her moral character from neighbors in her pension application.

Her 1905 pension application was rejected on grounds that she could not provide testimony from the doctor who attended her husband on his deathbed that he died of causes directly attributable to his wartime disability.  The doctor was by that time also deceased.  Nor did she have an example of her husband's signature (and she herself signed her affidavits with an "X").  She secured letters from her sister-in-law in Philadelphia.  Finally - and it took more than ten years for the Pension Bureaucracy to confirm this - she was without title even under the most recent Pension act because her husband was discharged two weeks shy of the required 90 days service.

These is a sense of pathos and desperation in these pension files.  There is an undated letter in a thick and shaky hand from Eliza Taylor's son, William,  to the Commissioner of Pensions that stands out in bold relief amid the piles of official correspondence and cool, typewritten responses:

                                                                              Hon Mr Saltzgaber

Dear Sir -  My Mother has Got a honorable Discharge Paper for Physical Disability of Farthers he Enlisted in the Lincoln Calvery New Yourk to serve 3 years but he only served 70 days i Would like to know if he is entitled to a Pension under the Law his Name Was Wm Taylor  We Was told to Write you and find out Please let me know...

This letter by itself had no impact, but the family started to enlist the help of area legislators.  Thomas W Bradley of the 20th NY district in 1911,  Edmund Platt of the 26th District in 1916, and then Hamilton Fish in 1921 all used their influence.  Congressman Bradley notes in his letter to the Commissioner of Pensions that "This old lady is now in frail health and destitute financially, and has the sympathetic interest of leading people of Newburgh."  Nothing could be done, however, until the Pension laws were again changed in 1920, finally allowing claims by Dependants of Union soldiers with less than 90 days in service.

But here a new complication arose.  Eliza Taylor was now 90 years old and there was no one living besides her children who had known her for the full period following her husband's death in Boston.  Her marriage status was questioned, and there is even - I can only assume misfiled since there is nothing else in the record to support it - a scrap of paper contained in her pension record rejecting a claim for pension application made in 1921 by the widow of a soldier named Elliott D. Stone on the grounds that both before and since his death the woman had been living in "notorious and adulterous cohabitation" and the first marriage had not been dissolved by divorce!  Whether this red herring fouled Eliza Taylor's  application I cannot say, but a special inquiry was called at Conressman Fish's insistance to review her application and determine whether she had at any time remarried since 1864.  Some of the previous material in her file had not been notarized and these also were required to be put in order before the claim could proceed.

The investigator took her affidavits once more and stated that he found all the testimony from her and her supporters to be of the highest order and that they were people of the first-class. Nonetheless, while he could find no evidence that she had ever remarried in New York, he felt compelled to refer the matter to Boston to account for the years spent there and there the record ends.  There is no evidence that my Gr-gr-great Grandmother ever received a pension.

This family photograph, taken in Newburgh in 1908, shows Eliza Taylor holding her great granddaughter Clara Leanor (Livingston) Abbott, flanked by daughter Clara (Taylor) Livingston and grandson William Edward Livingston.  Clara Abbott was my grandmother.  She almost never looked back at the past, and only in her final years and because it was clearly of interest to her family did she set down her reminiscences of what was a difficult and lonely childhood.  Still, there was a box of old tintypes and turn of the century photographs that she helped me identify, including the brown eyed cavalryman William Taylor and his aged widow Eliza.  Their story, housed in the vaults of an impersonal bureaucracy that failed to acknowledge a widow's pension claim, is nonetheless priceless to me.

Salty Dogs

Stay a bit shipmates, stay a bit if its pirates you'll be wanting to speak on.  S'pose you was to pass me that bottle that stands by you, for tellin' what these very deadlights have seen is thirsty work for a seafaring man.  Arr, here's luck then, and may yer bottom never foul nor never fetch hard on a lee shore!

Aye, there's a sight o' poor seamen sent down Davy Jones by the likes of o' that rum crew, and what the devils afloat don't scupper the mooncussers ashore have done.  Beachcombing they calls it; grave-robbing's nearer the mark - blast their eyes - a'picking through the bones of castaways like sandfleas.  'Ware the light on a dark shore, shipmate, or its shoal water and breakers for you sure.

Not quite the style, says you.  Not the fine figure of a freebooter put to canvas by the likes of  Pyle or Wyeth? Aye, but when all's said and done, a pirate's no gentleman, d'ysee.  No matter the cut of his cloth or the coin in his pocket, even fresh water's naught but bilge in the orlop.

Now these two scalawags are Cap'n "Black Dog" Emily and 1st Mate Elias, "the Red Hand Man". Now  I'll tell you true, I've seen Sam Bellamy in the Whydah and Edward Teach with the slow matches burning, and never yet have seen the like of these salty dogs.  I reckon you take them for landsmen, and their home port be Connecticut "the land of steady habits."  But they're collateral kin, d'ysee, to a Nutmegger privateer; Cap'n Gideon Olmsted, and the codlin don't fall far from the capstan if yer fool enough to set it there when the wind is up.  And their great, great, great grandpappy, John Thomas Martin, was Master of  the Great Lakes schooner "Walrus", which every tar and landsman knows from Stevenson was the name of old Flint's barky.  There was even one came back from Davy Jones - Archibald Gracie, he were -  went down with the Titanic and back again and plucked alive from the sea in the morning.  Aye, there are mariners in their line - pitch and oakum - and loot from the China Trade in every house and hall you can be sure.

Here's as scurvy a crew as ever fouled coils in a cable tier.  Why, they sailed by the wind to Stellwagen and back without so much as dry heave, and laughed when the whalefish broke water and set to blowin' off the starboard bow.  If ever you see Cap'n Emily and the Red Hand Man hull up and to windward, you're bound to strike or miss stays.

And what manner of man am I, then, to know these dread pirates so uncommon well, says you.  Are you a magistrate, then, yer honor?  I needn't sign articles with the likes of them to know their quality.  I sired them!   And what's more, shipmate, dead men tell no tales. Arr!

32 days until International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Backs to Nature

"Conserving Land for People" is the conservation mission of my employer, the Trust for Public Land.  So there will likely be considerable concern at TPL and for other conservation non-profits in America over the findings of a study published in September's Journal of Environmental Management entitled: "Is love of nature in the US becoming love of electronic media?"  Researchers Oliver R.W. Pergams and Patricia A. Zaradic, Smith Fellows with the Nature Conservancy's Society for Conservation Biology, report disturbing correlations between a 16 year trend of declining attendance at US National Parks and the proliferation of electronic entertainment choices.

"After 50 years of steady increase, per capita visits to US national parks have declined since 1988. This decline, coincident with the rise in electronic entertainment media, may represent a shift in recreation choices with broader implications for the value placed on biodiversity conservation and environmentally responsible behavior. We compared the decline in per capita visits with a set of indicators representing alternate recreation choices and constraints...Multiple linear regression of four of the entertainment media variables as well as oil prices explains 97.5% of this recent decline (r=0.975, multiple r²=0.950, adjusted multiple r²=0.925, SE=0.015, F=37.800, P<0.0001). We may be seeing evidence of a fundamental shift away from people's appreciation of nature (biophilia, Wilson 1984) to ‘videophilia,’ which we here define as “the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media.” Such a shift would not bode well for the future of biodiversity conservation. "

I have noted the similar trend of declining attendance at outdoor living history museums here, and find it easy to credit statistics like this that reinforce my aversion to choosing a virtual reality over the natural world - though even I am drawn to the corpse light of the video screen, as this blog and the time I spend on it will attest.

The trouble is, all the hand wringing by mainstream conservationists - and apparently those decidedly outside the mainstream visitors to our National Parks - about how modern American culture rejects our wide open spaces for the internal worlds of computer, iPod and Playstation is not going to make biodiversity conservation any more relevant to the vast majority of Americans.  Nor are our National Parks, as vital and significant as they may be, the only way that Americans can re-connect with the natural world.

The majority of us now live in urban and suburban settings.  We learn about nature from The Discovery Channel or when deer browse the landscaping of our subdivisions.  Think how many Americans flocked to The March of the Penguins documentary last year and what it must have represented to those with no direct experience of wildlife, let alone in that exotic place!  Or explore a vacant city lot with children, and marvel at the pleasure they find not only amid the detritus of urban life but discovering the tangled vines, the brave flowers growing through cracks in concrete. 

Conservationists make a mistake if we feel that the only way to build constituencies for our work is to get more people to recreate as we true believers do.  We make the same mistake when we assume that those who live closest to the resource represent greater threats to its conservation through their "problematic behavior" than they do opportunities for sustainable natural resource management and local stewardship.

And frankly, I'm not so certain that what our national parks need are more visitors and their associated impacts.  So long as we are not selling off our national heritage do to an assumption of its declining value as measured by declining attendance, there are some places that could use a bit of rest from all the hustle and bustle of homo sapiens sapiens, let alone the electronic noise that often accompanies them to campgrounds across the American wilderness.

CWCID: Garry Peterson at Resilience Science

Wolves on the Range

Sarpy Sam, a Montana rancher I've come to admire through his blog Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere, is thinking about wolves.  Wolves are an emotionally charged issue in the northern Rockies at the epicenter of deep running fault lines where state and federal government policy and regulations, private property and federal lands, and the competing interests of those make their living working the land and those who make their living working to conserve it intersect.

Sam does not have gray wolves on his ranch yet and would not welcome them there, but neither does he take every protestation of the threats they pose to his and the livelihoods of other ranchers at face value.  There is plenty of hyperbole on both sides of the issue of wolf reintroduction in the West.  Today, Sam comments on an article in yesterday's Billings Gazette concerning what some in the ranching community suspect may be a link between an increased predator population and a reduction in weight gain and market value in cattle herds that have experienced predation.

"Now I've never heard of this concern before with wolves returning to livestock areas. I am not an expert on these things so I won't even begin to say for sure. Are the ranchers just blowing smoke or is there something to it? It would be interesting to know more information on this. I'm assuming that this is just like any other story a person hears, there is a partial truth to it. There might be an affect on livestock weight gain but the article overstates it. With the ranching business every dollar lost hurts so I can see why the ranchers are complaining. I mean really, the opening paragraph is a little overstated since not all meat comes from the area where wolves presently are, I know they keep moving further out, so not all critters are affected at this time so I don't know how a consumer will notice "skimpier lamb chops and porterhouse steaks." A little overstated. More information would be of interest."

Sam lets you know where he stands - he's not a fan of wolves and sees them as a threat.  As a rancher whose economic survival depends on his ability to anticipate threats and minimize risk, he has to be cautious.  The USDA estimates that the annual loss of livestock to direct predation in the United States amounts to at least $71 million, predominantly from coyotes.  But the question of whether there would be significant economic losses to ranchers like Sam caused not by direct predation but from the stress it may cause cattle and with it an associated weight loss peaks his curiosity, and also mine.

Ecologists recognize the predator's role of improving the overall fitness of prey species in natural systems by weeding out the sick, weak and elderly and thereby promoting the survival of the fittest individuals.  Wild herd animals have developed strategies to contend with predators, including group flight reducing the likelihood of any single individual being selected as a target (think of a buffalo stampede), or a defensive huddle with the young and weaker individuals sheltered by larger animals with heads lowered and potentially dangerous at bay.  Horns, after all, evolved to contend with predators as well as to defend territory and compete for the right to mate.  Buffalo have them.  So do wild cattle, but nearly all commercial varieties are shorn today because of the damage their horns can do to themselves and others, especially while in transit.

Animal behavior theory, like those of economists, assigns opportunity costs to individual behaviors.  An animal will move a certain distance and expend a certain amount of energy to find food based on the costs it incurs in calories.  There may even be -all things being equal - an optimal cost/distance ratio for some species.  Presumably, agricultural science has progressed to the point that there is an ideal grazing and feeding regime to produce animals with the best meat.   Natural systems seldom attain that kind of equilibrium, however.

In times of stress - drought, perhaps, - wild herd animals may cluster around available resources or range further, at greater cost, to get the resources they need.  Wildebeest migrations in Eastern Africa and the historic movements of bison are examples of the latter phenomenon on a grand scale. Nomadic pastoralists move their herds to make use of unequally distributed resources in non-equilibrium environments.  Individual animals may lose condition along the way, but given time and fresh resources the herds return to vigor.

What Richard Dawkins famously calls The Selfish Gene, which among other things offers a way to explain why a parent would sacrifice itself for its offspring rather than preserve its own life, may also be at work in how animals respond to increased predation.  I have watched an ostrich in the Kalahari mimic broken wings to lead me away from its tiny brood.  Think how deeply ingrained in the genetic memory of that flightless bird this behavior must be!

The question raised in the Billings Gazette and echoed by Sarpy Sam is how predation affects herd animals that are not, strictly speaking, part of a natural system and for whom there are other success measures than mere genetic survival that apply.  How do range cattle deal with wolves and how do predators influence the movements of cattle?  Do they huddle together, defending their young despite the lack of horns, and therefore mimic conditions of over-utilization when resources are scarce and migration is the more costly option?  Do they continue to graze but more furtively, consuming less and burning more calories?  What research exists, in the Rocky Mountain West or in comparable environments where predators co-occur with livestock?

I do not know the answers to these questions.  Nor did I find much additional evidence during a brief on-line search to either support or refute the contentions about animal weight loss and predation made in the article, although the USDA appears to have been seeking proposals to research some of these impacts last year.  As I understand it, for ranching operations with a base herd (as opposed to stocker/yearling operations where animals are purchased and grazed after weaning) , the greater the percentage of calf crop weaned - where calf crop is the ratio of calves over the total number of cows in the herd - and the higher the weaning weight, the more revenue for the producer.  An experiment designed to test the predator hypothesis might compare the percentage of calf-crop weaned and weaning weight in areas with different predator levels against control areas without wolves or coyotes.  All other factors affecting calf crop and weaning weight e.g. the quality and quantity of available resources would need to be controlled for in the experiment to isolate any impacts from the presence of wolves.

Inquiry-based statistical evidence is one thing.  How ranchers feel about predators, the potential threat they pose to their livelihoods and the impacts of government regulation and conservation measures, has far greater standing in the areas where predation is a concern than the best research evidence to the contrary. The roots of the conflict go much deeper than these recently reintroduced wolves.  The bottom line is that people who live off the land and depend on its resources for their livelihoods are unlikely to support predator conservation when they are asked to absorb known and unrecognized costs and bear all the burden without deriving significant tangible benefits.  This lesson has been shown time and again in international conservation efforts and written about by my friend Lars in his frequent postings on this topic at Conservation Finance.

I do not for one minute hold that every restriction placed on me as an individual property holder in America constitutes a government taking.  The history of private property rights in this country recognizes the common good as often as it defends the individual's right to property. An excellent book on this topic is Eric Freyfogle's The Land We Share, which demonstrates that American property law has frequently embodied community interests.  Nonetheless, if we as a society value wolves and we value ranchers, we need to find ways to accommodate the needs of both.  If that means giving those who live closest to the resource a greater stake in its conservation and management, then that may well mean either compensating ranchers for the full impacts of predators on their livelihoods, or better yet treating wolves as another ranch product for which there is a market of public interest and with real economic value to the producer.  The Safe Harbor program of the USFWS is a partial step in that direction, proving incentives for landowners who voluntarily conserve rare species on their lands without the risk of further encumbrance of their activities under the federal Endangered Species Act. Further assigning a real market value for reproducing wolf populations on private land and a maximum stocking limit after which they, like any other expanding wildlife species, would be subject to management, might be a greater conservation incentive. 

Still, I'll wait and see what Sam and his neighbors think of this idea.  They're an independent bunch and not overly fond of government hand outs or charity and it's their livelihoods at risk, not mine.  The danger of inadequate solutions conceived by those such as me living outside the context of the problem is an old one with a sad history of repetition.  Clearly, though, the status quo is serving neither the interest of the ranchers, nor of the wolves.

Riverside

I took a different route to work this morning, dropping down the eastern side of the Housatonic of River Road between Falls Village and West Cornwall.  The road turns to gravel at the Cornwall line, and follows the narrow ground alongside the Housatonic River and the freight line.  The trees are thick at the roadside and the high walls of the gorge rise up on either side of the river.  It was a cool morning, crisp and autumnal without the humidity of recent weeks.  I didn't wish to rush the journey.

There are several places along this section of river where cars can pull out and canoes can put in.  I parked at one of these, wide enough for two vehicles because it is perched on what was once a stone bridge abutment.  Its mate on the opposite bank is largely intact but shrouded in riverine vegetation - sycamore and elm and ash.  The riverside is tumbled stone, boulders scoured by glacier and flood and pocked by stone-fly larvae.  There are raccoon tracks in the silt at the river bend, and the carapaces of crayfish lie scattered on the rocks.

The sunlight played on the water in a wide sweep before me, the river bolting out of the shadows above and swirling around a bend not far downstream.  The air was thick with darting swallows. A great blue heron winged down the gorge as I stood on the shore, and a sandpiper with yellow legs hopped along the far bank. 

The Housatonic is shallow enough here during low water to wade the stream were one so inclined, and pours through riffles and emergent stones.  Mergansers cluster on sunny rocks.  Water trickles down the bank at intervals from clefts in the hillside.  There were freshwater mussel shells, large as surf clams, in the shallows. You cannot hear the traffic high up the western slope where my regular commute follows the twists and turns of Rte 7.  A single vehicle passed behind me during my stream side idyll. 

Finally, feeling the tug of my waiting office downstream, I reluctantly climbed up the bank and drove slowly down the road and over the covered bridge at West Cornwall to rejoin the mainstream of traffic and travelers once more.  I plan to take more of these diversions as the season turns toward Autumn and the golden light on the dark water is kissed by falling leaves instead of skimming swallows.

"For Want of a Comma..."

And they say that grammar is dead.  Tell that to the lawyers.  Monday's Canadian Globe and Mail has a story describing an expensive error in punctuation on a contract for the use of telephone poles in the Canadian Maritimes that may cost the lessee millions of extra dollars.

The offending sentence in an otherwise ironclad contract reads as follows:

"(The agreement) shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) which reviewed the contract, that second comma allows either party to terminate the contract at will with one year's written notice, rather than applying after the first five year term as intended by the lessee.  The rules of grammar are against that interpretation, regardless of the intent of the contract, so now instead of paying a lease fee of $9.60 Canadian to use 91,000 telephone poles, a renegotiated contract with existing rate increases may end up costing as much as $28.05 Canadian per pole.

An expensive lesson in English grammar, as well in the value of careful legal review.

CWCID: Books, Words and Writing

Weataug, Weanadnauk and Wussiadeneuk: Ancient Names for Modern Places

Garrison Keiller gets a lot of mileage out of the fictional New England town "Passacautawattaquoddymoggin", or however it is spelled.  Algonquian place names abound in our region, especially in Maine and along the coastal regions where first contacts were made with Europeans and the native American population was historically more densely settled.  Western New England, with its poor soils, cold winters, and uncomfortable proximity to the fierce Mohawk, was much more lightly settled at the time that Dutch and English settlers began moving up the river valleys and into the shadow of the Berkshire and Litchfield hills.

Still, as noted previously here, we have our share of native American names along the Housatonic (Wussi-adene-uk, or "Land Beyond the Mountains") and scattered about its tributaries.  The first Mahican people who settled along the river shared a common language and were identified by their dwelling places.  The names described the natural attributes, although English transcriptions and modern usage have all but obscured their origins and original meanings. 

There was a significant settlement at the "Winds Mountain Place" or Wean-adn-auk in modern day New Milford.  It endures today in the name of the regional Weantinoge Heritage Land Trust.  The meaning of Weatogue Rd. in Salisbury has been lost, but it referred to the native Americans who settled in that place and must have described something about the local geography.

The largest tributaries of the Housatonic within the Litchfield Hills have names of native American origin as well.  There are the Naugatuck ("lone tree by the fishing place"), Pomperaug (the name of a local sachem), Nonnewaug ( "fresh water fishing place") and Shepaug ("rocky water"), among others.  American roots.  Bantam in Litchfield is thought by William Bright in his 2004 book Native American Placenames of the United States to be a corruption of peäntam, literally "he prays", denoting a Christian Indian.

Knowing something of the origin and meaning of these familiar landmarks and the landscape of the Litchfield Hills helps to center me on this stony ground and in the nearly forgotten past , when names were like signposts in a personal geography, connecting and reconnecting to the land and its people. 

Aunt Bec's Pigeon Pie and Other Chester Valley Reminiscences

Our family tree has a Quaker branch.  My Gr-gr-great grandmother, Margaret Currie Walker, was born and raised in Chester Valley, Pennsylvania in a family of lapsed Quakers who still held to plain speech and dress even though, in a previous generation, an ancestor had been dismissed from Meeting for marrying out of the faith "contrary to the usage of Friends." 

Margaret Walker married a railroad builder from old New England stock, but in later years her children and grandchildren returned to the Valley to visit their country cousins and enjoy the famous hospitality of their farms.

Late in life, her grand-daughter (my Great grandmother) Margaret Stearns (Olmsted) Ogden set down her memories of her Quaker relatives and of trips to the country when a young girl in the 1880s.  To a city dweller from Elizabeth, New Jersey, the places she explored in Chester Valley "made an unforgettable impression on a little girl, long ago."  Here is her evocative description of the farm, and especially the spring house, of her Uncle Mat Walker:

"The house was built by Enoch Walker about 1727.  It was added to through the years and was a comfortable rambling house of many rooms for the large families of the Walker family.  The place was called "Rehoboth Spring" for the many springs on the farm...There were apple trees close by the house, and elms and evergreens sheltered the comfortable piazza across the front.    I wonder if the babbling brook still winds its way in the fields back of the house.  I remember the smell of the fragrant mint that grew along its banks.  It was the first time I had ever seen mint, and in a wet spot along the brookside I saw my first snake's head lily. It was an enchanting place - and Oh the spring house close by.  It was built of stone (doubtless from the quarry nearby which provided the stone for Rehoboth and the other houses.) Inside it was cool and dark.  Set in the shallow stream fed by the spring that ran by the sides of the spring house were large shining pans of milk on which the thick golden cream was rising.  There were also bowls of cottage cheese and a pan of corn meal mush to be cut and fried as needed."

The farms themselves were magical places for a little girl to explore, and her country relatives appear to have enjoyed sharing them with the little nieces and nephews from the city:

"Uncle Charlie used to carry us around on his back to the brook to find frogs and tadpoles, or to gather eggs, or to watch old Isy, the colored man of all work whose real name was Isaiah, milk the cows.  I used to like the hot milk from the cows with the good cottage cheese, and every day Uncle Charlie brought in a squab 'for little Madge.' I enjoyed those squabs until I learned they were some of the pretty pigeons that cooed in the loft in the barn - then I refused to eat one - but in later years I ate with relish some of Aunt Bec's delicious 'pigeon pie.'"

Memories of food in my Great-grandmother's narrative are inseparable from memories of family. 

My father used to like telling a story of an early visit to Willow Grove [another family farm in the Valley - Ed.].  Uncle Tom took him aside and asked; 'William, dost thee ever imbibe?'  They had a drink and it was not cider - both Tom and Matt Walker were famous for the cider and their apples."

By far the greatest table was laid by Aunt Bec Massey in which the best Pennsylvania farm fare set the tables to groaning.

"It was always a family gathering and Aunt Rebecca's meals were famous.  A huge table literally covered with food. Individual tastes were considered and there were many 'favorite dishes.'  Always chicken and ham or pork - platters of homemade sausage with fried apples, rich croquettes, fried mush, applesauce, baked Pennsylvania Dutch cheese, various pickles and jellies, great piles of home-made bread, hot biscuits - both of these so good with the pats of freshly churned butter each pat marked with a sheaf of wheat.    Then there would be cold-slaw, boiled onions and other vegetables.  The dessert was always pies - apple and cherry and blackberry or some first fruit put up in its abundance.  With the pie we had cheese and steaming coffee.

Never was there such a meal.  Aunt Rebbecca was a wonderful cook.  I have her recipe for scrapple, often made by my grandmother, too, but no one could make it taste like Aunt Bec.  The guests gathered by noon or before, often driving many miles -there were no automobiles then - and dinner was served about one.  Then came a rest for the elders.  I have seen them snoozing in their chairs or on the stiff sofas while the younger ones wandered out doors.  Next there was a spirited game of 5 handed euchre or work bags were opened with patchwork or knitting and much family gossip was enjoyed.  Before leaving pitchers of cider with cinnamon buns were brought in, or tea and thin slices of spiced cake, a sort of glorified gingerbread.  Those were days to remember.  No one wanted supper after a visit to Aunt Rebbecca."

Such feasting, marvelously described, puts the conventional Thanksgiving dinner to shame.  And what a record she leaves of a time when, at least when visiting the family in the Valley, the land really did seem to flow with milk and honey!

The Jacob Factor: What it Says About America

The data from 2005 are in and once again, according to social security card applications for newborns, the most popular girl's name in America is Emily.  Emily first appeared in the top ten list between 1985 and 1990 and has reigned supreme for nearly a decade.  Our daughter Emily was born in 2000, though it was news to us that we had given her the most popular name for American girls.  In a family that knows its roots and often maintains ancient family names - our son Elias is a case in point - there is not another known Emily in our pedigree.  Nonetheless Emily is #1, and sharing the top spot and the most popular name for little boys since 1998 is...Jacob.

Really?  I find that astonishing.  I can't think of the last time I met a young person with that name, although there are countless Tylers, Connors, Trevors and the like.  Perhaps, like politics, the most popular names come from the most populous regions, while little states like Connecticut or lightly settled states like Montana favor other names that don't have the numbers to crack the top ten.  Maybe there are Emily states and Jacob states.

Putting this theory to the test, one finds that in 2005 Jacob ranks a measly 12th on the list of boys names in Connecticut, with Emily a strong second to Olivia.  Connecticut is clearly an Emily State but Jacob fails to crack the top ten.  In this way it is also like New Jersey, where Emily holds the #1 spot but Jacob is a distant 19th for boys, and New York where Jacob comes in at 14th and Emily is likewise 1st.  In all other states Jacob is at least 8th (although in DC it drops to 23rd) and is at the top of the list in 40% of all states.  Emily is a strong performer, #1 in sixteen states and 7th or better in all but Hawai'i, where the name is an anomalous 21st overall while Jacob comes in at 2nd.  The only states that exactly mirror the national trend for both names are Colorado and Illinois.

There may be a regional trend at work here as well.  States in which Jacob fails to make the top five for boys names - with the single exception of AL at 6th - form a contiguous northeastern cluster (MD, 7th; De, 6th; NJ, 19th; NY, 14th; CT 12th; MA 8th).  That explains why I don't trip over Jacobs on the way to the town pool.  The axis of Emily is stronger and shows no such regional pattern.  Emily is in the top 4 in all states but the aforementioned Hawai'i, North Dakota (7th) and Wyoming (7th), and in each of these states there was a relatively small sample size. 

I'm no statistician, but from where I'm sitting, here is a new way to take the pulse of the nation.  Instead of red states or blue, we should instead look for areas that favor Emily or Jacob.  Opinion polls should only take place in Colorado and Illinois, since they alone mirror the national naming trends. If you want to make a favorable impression in the powerful Northeast Corridor from MD to MA where Jacob fairs poorest, consider changing your name to Michael, Matthew or Ryan: almost uniformly the top three names for boys in this region.  Or, if you want your son to stand out, I can guarantee that Elias does not register in any top 10 list. 

CWCID: Mongabay

"Little Mac" Attack: History vs. the Soldier's View

Among the condolences received by my Gr-gr-great grandmother on the death of her husband, John Owen Stearns, was a letter from Capt. Theodore Read, a staff officer serving with the Union Army of the Potomac.  The last three pages are preserved in our family archive, and describe the despair felt by the soldiers serving under General George Brinton McClellan when he was relieved of his command by Lincoln after failing to follow up on the northern success at Antietam.

I have often wondered at the disconnect between the deep affection the Army of the Potomac had for its ill-starred commander and the verdict of history.  His men by their own accounts adored him.  Lincoln was certain the soldier votes of McClellan's veterans would cost him re-election in 1864 when "Little Mac" ran on the Democratic ticket.  Yet armchair generals and Civil War buffs alike condemn McClellan as a failed and self-promoting army commander who may have been an efficient administrator but who consistently over-estimated his foes and was outgeneraled time and again on the Peninsula.

McClellan's own private letters to his wife, and public letters to his   commander in chief, betray arrogance, self importance, even venality in his character, but this is not the man his soldiers saw.  Despite the failure of the peninsula Campaign, McClellan's soldiers overwhelmingly reaffirmed their faith in their commander, so much so that when the rumor spread up the line of Union columns on the March to Gettysburg that McClellan had once again been recalled to lead them, they erupted in spontaneous cheers.

Soldiers may not be able to see battlefields as widely as their commanders, or with the long view and hindsight of historians, but they are not stupid.  Theodore Read, Capt. and A.A.G. on General Brooks staff, 6th Army Corps, spoke for many of his comrades when he wrote of the despondency they felt at McClellan's farewell in November, 1862:

"Symptoms of a conflict have been heard for several days in the roar of the Artillery of our advance guard reverberating through the mountains.  When the fury of the Storm will burst upon us God only knows.  A gloom has settled on every camp and sorrow is at the heart of every Officer and Soldier because of the loss of their beloved chieftain McClellan.  Never was man more loved than he.  His soldiery loved him almost to idolatry.  He was of strict integrity, pure of heart, a true patriot and an able general.  It is the feeling in the camp that a deep act of injustice has been done, purely from political motives, and there is a general indignation manifested.  The demonstrations of affection with which little "Mac" was received by his troops as he paid them a farewell visit it is beyond the power of pen to describe.  He is gone from us, but he has left a void.  An apathy is upon the army.  They care not to win laurels unless they can share them with the leader who has shared their dangers heretofore.  Yet I hope for the best and that no harm will result to the cause of our country from this act of the government."

History cannot dismiss out of hand the primary record of hundreds if not thousands of soldiers like Theodore Read who expressed similar devotion to McClellan despite the setbacks experienced by his army.  Compared to his subsequent successors, the hopelessly out of depth Burnside and paralytic Hooker, McClellan's qualities - ponderous, calculated, conservative - were those of an efficient engineer and administrator but not a nimble, offensive commander.  Nonetheless there were battlefield victories for the Union even as McClellan withdrew his army intact from the Peninsula. 

McClellan is a complex figure.  His tactics may have been unsuccessful, but the love of his troops is beyond question.  McClellan cared for his soldiers.  He may well have cared for them too much to risk the army he had built and use it for its full purpose.  Yet war aims in 1862 were evolving dramatically, and it is doubtful that the tactics of attrition employed by Grant in 1864 would have been politically possible in the Spring of the War when the North depended on an army of volunteers; there was no draft until 1863, and it was not yet a total war.  Had Lincoln been up for re-election in 1862, he would almost certainly have lost the soldier vote, but by 1864 the veterans knew that only a ruthlessly aggressive campaign against the South would bring the war to a close, and the majority voted for Lincoln.

Theodore Read continued to win promotions on General Brook's staff, rising to the rank of Colonel, and near the end of the war was brevetted a Brigadier General.  On April 6th, 1865, he lead a mixed command to destroy bridges over the Appomattox and was killed at High Bridge, Virginia.  He was the last Union general killed in the Civil War.