For daily Histocrats content on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, I decided to do something different. Each day, I would select a book that I have read, or would like to read, and make three separate posts about it. The first post would be about a person(s) connected to the book the second post would be about a connected place, and the third about a connected thing.
In case you miss any of the posts, or want to review them, I will post them weekly, as a blog.
PERSON
George Washington Vanderbilt II was the grandson of "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, born in 1862. He was pale, slender, bookish, shy and introverted, amassing thousands of books and paintings. He read eight languages. By age 23, he had inherited about $12 million, worth about $340 million in today's dollars. He built Biltmore Estate as a bachelor, marrying Edith Dresser in 1898, and they had one child, Cornelia. They only lived at Biltmore for a few months a year. George died from complications following an appendectomy in 1914.
PLACE.
In the 1880s, George Vanderbilt decided to build a "little mountain escape" near Asheville, North Carolina. Biltmore Estate became, and still is, the largest privately owned house in the U.S., at 178,926 sq ft. Construction began in 1889, under the direction of architect Richard Morris Hunt, and the house was completed in 1895. It includes 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 65 fireplaces. (Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt had one child, and they only lived at Biltmore a few months a year.)
Vanderbilt hired pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to design the grounds and pioneering conservationists Gifford Pinchot and Carl A. Schenck to revive the long-suffering North Carolina forests surrounding the house. Much of the original land later became the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest, and Shenck established the first forestry education program in the U.S. on the estate grounds.
THING
For his 21st birthday, George Vanderbilt was given a chess set by a friend. Not just any chess set, it was purportedly the chess set belonging to the exiled Emperor Napoleon. Allegedly, Napoleon's heart was placed on the table during his autopsy.
Visitors to Biltmore Estate may see the set and table in the library.
Person
Polly Adler, aka Pearl Adler, (c.1900-1962) was born in what is now Yanow, Belarus, a mostly Jewish community that was then within the Russian Pale, the territory Jews were required to live in. There, Jews were subject to discrimination and violent pogroms from their Russian, Belorussian, and Polish neighbors.
As the oldest child, she was sent, alone at age 13, to distant (basically unknown) relatives in Massachusetts in order to prepare the way for the rest of the family later. She barely earned enough at factory work to pay room and board, but, in her late teens and early twenties, she discovered a much more lucrative business. Over the next three decades, she became New York City's most famous Madam; her name was inserted into songs, she inspired Broadway characters, and Oscar-winner Shelley Winters played her in the film adaptation of her autobiography, A House is Not a Home.
She ran multiple apartments in Manhattan, always on the move because of harassment and extortion from police. (The entire NYC police department and legal establishment at the time seemed to be corrupt, and a large part of a Madam's income went toward bribes and fines. Policemen could be customers one night, even same night, make arrests the next night, and take payoffs to dismiss charges, the next day.)
Polly's business didn't operate the way one might think. She might have 4-5 sex workers living in the apartment, but she had access to as many as 600. A customer would call her, describe what kind of "party" he was looking for, and she would give him an address and call in the necessary girls.
If you were a heterosexual white man of some means in New York City, you were likely a patron of Polly's.
Place
Polly Adler didn't operate her New York City brothels the way one might picture brothels. She maintained several luxury apartments around Manhattan and frequently moved from apartment to apartment to escape police harassment. Usually, 4-5 girls would be living in the apartment at a time, and Polly would call other girls in as needed, or she would send customers to one address or another.
Soon, wealthy, famous, and infamous men would frequent her apartments. Some came for the sex, some came for the booze, some came for the raucous parties and for the music (Polly and other madams often hired jazz musicians like Duke Ellington and members of his orchestra to perform after the club gigs until after sunrise ), but some came to relax, even to write or work, in a place that they knew provided a respite from wives, reporters, police, and even rival gangsters. Some women, like Algonquin Round Table wit Dorothy Parker and actress Tallulah Bankhead, and homosexual men even came for the atmosphere and the camraderie.
Polly often recruited girls from the ranks of Broadway chorus girls and aspiring starlets and dancers who supplemented their theater income with prostitution. Although Polly was the epitome of discretion, rumors spread that "Polly's Follies," as her girls were sometimes known, included Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford, Dorothy Lamour, and Martha Raye at various times in their very early careers. Polly confirmed nothing, but she did write about meeting Hepburn, and other sources point to truth about Lamour and possibly Martha Raye.
Thing
Pictured here are autographs of various A-list actors and celebrities who were customers and/or friends of Polly Adler. Her house attracted wealthy and upper class society and business men, famous musicians, playwrights, and producers of Broadway and the Jazz Age. Friends and patrons of Polly included such luminaries as the Marx Brothers, Frank Sinatra, John Garfield, Robert Benchley, Desi Arnaz, and Milton Berle. Joe DiMaggio was one of her frequent guests along with other well-known athletes, especially boxers. Political customers and friends included everyone who was anyone in New York, from Mayor Jimmy Walker to Governor Franklin Roosevelt. Then, there are the gangsters who offered Polly business and protection, along with a lot of stress and headaches: Arnold Rothstein, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Dutch Schultz, to name a few.
Madam was one of my favorite reads of 2021, not just the fascinating story of Polly Adler, but a great look at the time, the Jazz Age, Prohibition, Great Depression, the gangster era, etc.
Person.
In 1899, two brothers, George and Willie Muse, were working in a tobacco field near Truevine, the black community of Roanoke, Virginia, when a circus talent scout, named James "Candy" Shelton, kidnapped them. They were albinos and possibly mentally challenged. Over the next several decades, the Muse brothers were exploited and forced into sideshow exhibits, where they were billed as wild men, savages, monkey men, and even Martians.
They were told that their mother was dead and that they had been given to Shelton. Although there is a thought that their mother, Harriet Muse, sold or rented them out, she, the boys, and their family maintained that they were lured with candy and kidnapped. In truth, the family says that Harriet immediately dedicated her life to finding them, constantly running into roadblocks from the racist Jim Crow system. She finally found them in 1927, (According to the police report, she said that she had agreed for the boys to be taken for only a few months. Author Beth Macy was unable to discern the truth.) found a sympathetic lawyer, and launched legal challenges against the circus. In a settlement, the circus paid back wages, agreed to pay the brothers and their parents, and hired a brother as a roustabout. It was decided that their life in the circus - show business - was preferable to life off the circuit.
Harriet died in 1942, and the Muse brothers continued performing until the mid-1950s, when they retired to the house Harriet had built with the settlement funds, and they were cared for by their sister Annie Bell Saunders, niece Dorothy Brown, and great niece Nancy Saunders. George died in 1872, and Willie died in 2001 at the age of 108.
Place.
For over a century, the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg/Clearwater/Sarasota area of Florida has been the winter home of circuses, carnivals, sideshows, and their employees.
John Ringling, one of the five famous Ringling brothers at one time owned 25% of Sarasota's total land area. In the early 1910s, he built a mansion on the waterfront and then built an art museum to house his large collection; today, the Ringling Art Museum is the official state art museum of Florida. In 1948, a circus museum was added to the grounds. Visitors and historians can find costumes, props, posters, and other circus history artifacts, including a massive miniature circus landscape. The collection and archives also include several photos, posters, and poster reproductions documenting George and Willie Muse's performing career, when they were billed as Eko and Iko.
When you're in the Sarasota area, you should plan a day at the art museum, circus museum, and mansion.
Thing
After being kidnapped as boys, brothers George and Willie Muse were exhibited as sideshow freaks for over fifty years. Posters like these portrayed them as Eko and Iko, wild men, monkey men, missing links, savages, sheep headed men, etc., from Dahomey, Madagascar, Peru, Egypt, Ethiopia, and even from Mars.
Their handler was shocked one day when he gave them a banjo and a ukulele as photo props, and they began to play. Even more surprising was that Willy could play and song most songs after hearing them once. From that point on, music became a part of their act. After their retirement, neighbors often heard them playing music and singing inside or on their porch.
Truevine is a dark story, but, in the end, the brothers had a comfortable-ish life, cared for by their relatives and neighbors, and the book offers insights into the life and business of the freak show. It's been optioned for a movie or tv adaptation.
Person.
Edwin Booth (1833-1893) was an American actor who toured the U.S. and Europe, performing mostly Shakespearean roles. Some theatrical historians consider him the greatest American actor, and the greatest Prince Hamlet, of the 19th century.
He was the son of English actor Junius Brutus Booth who was quite successful in Britain and then left his wife and children there and moved to the U.S. with his young leading lady. Edwin was the firstborn of his American family, and his brothers, Junius Brutus Jr and John Wilkes also became actors. The three brothers only performed together once, in a benefit performance of Julius Caesar in 1864.
As a young teen, Edwin started traveling with his mercurial father, serving as his assistant and dresser. A large part of his job was keeping track of his erratic father, who had a huge alcohol problem and was known for disappearing before or after performances. On tour, he started appearing with his father on stage, and Junius Sr. let it be known that Edwin was the son chosen to carry on the family name, stoking the jealousy of the much less talented John Wilkes.
Edwin was a different sort of actor than his father. Junius Sr. was known for his loud and bombastic style. His signature role was Richard III. Edwin, on the other hand, was known for his quiet, introspective style, more suited for the role of Hamlet.
Place.
In 1888, Edwin Booth purchased a Greek Revival townhouse at 16 Gramercy Park South, New York, and hired noted architect Stanford White to refurbish it. It became The Players, a social club that still exists today. The top floor was turned into living quarters for Booth, and it is still maintained as he used it. Booth intended the club to be a place for actors to mingle with successful men ( Women were admitted in 1987.) of all walks of life. Today, it is also a repository of theater history.
Things.
As mentioned in the second post of today, The Players was opened as a social club by Edwin Booth in order to provide a place for actors to mingle with "real people," at least the prominent members of that group, and he lived on the top floor for the last five years of his life.
The building also now houses a collection of theatrical artifacts including props, costumes, posters, etc. Among these is a skull and a dagger used by Booth in his most acclaimed role, Hamlet.
Nearby, there is also a statue of Booth.
If you have an interest in the Lincoln assassination, My Thoughts Be Bloody represents a different perspective, as it delves into John Wilkes Booth's life and motivations, and it's a great biography of the Booth men.
Person.
Benjamin Tallmadge was a major in the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons during the American Revolution. George Washington made him the director of military intelligence. Now, we know Washington as the "father of our country" and the head of the Continental Army, and we know that he wasn't the greatest military tactician, but historians only discovered a few decades ago that he was America's first great spymaster. Washington realized how important intelligence was, and he put Tallmadge in charge of the task. Tallmadge created the Culper ( name chosen by Washington, inspired by Culpeper County Virginia) Spy Ring, a spy network that collected information on British troop movements in and around New York City.
The Culper Ring successfully uncovered details of a planned surprise attack on French forces, a British plan to counterfeit colonial currency, and Benedict Arnold's treason. The ring consisted of agents that Washington never knew, and their own knowledge of members was very limited. They communicated information using codes and invisible ink, through notes and letters and sometimes in newspapers.
The general public, and many historians, were unaware of the Culper Ring and its activities until the 1930s, when an historian compared handwriting of member Robert Townsend to "Samuel Culper, Jr." in papers belonging to Washington.
Place.
The Culper spy ring was formed by Benjamin Tallmadge, Abraham Woodhull, and Robert Townsend, under orders of George Washington. The ring was active from late October 1778 until the British evacuation in 1783.
New York was a major theater of the American Revolution, important because of its population, geography, and economic status. The Culper ring's work was mostly centered in New York City, Long Island, and Connecticut. Members of the ring used secret codes, invisible ink, and other means to send messages about British troop numbers and movements to Tallmadge and ultimately to Washington himself. Their work was crucial to the American Patriot cause, but it really wasn't well known until the mid-20th century.
If you're in the Long Island area yourself, be sure to check out the tours offered by Tri-Spy Tours, @culperspyringtour . They offer walking, bike, and kayak tours.
In New York City, Patriot Tours, @patriottoursnyc , also offers Culper tours among its Revolutionary War tours. (See our 7 Questions with Karen Q of Patriot Tours https://chattingwiththehistocrats.blogspot.com/2021/12/7-questions-with-karen-q-historical.html?m=1 )
Things
The first picture is the letter written by George Washington, initiating the military intelligence operations of the Culper Ring. Then, a letter to agent Robert Townsend, from Benjamin Tallmadge, the head of the ring. The other two pictures are pages of code used to decipher coded messages.
Author and History TV presenter Brad Meltzer wrote a trilogy of political thrillers that imagines that the Culper Ring never disbanded and has devoted itself to protecting the U.S. presidency. Believe it or not, the heroes of the thrillers are archivists by day and brave Culper Ring agents by night, so to speak. I discovered these books last month and found them to be fun reads. And they make me wonder: Does Brad Meltzer ever sleep? Seriously, just look up his body of work.
People.
Metacom, 1638-1676, was the second son of Wanpanoag chief, or sachem, Massasoit, who had welcomed the Plymouth Massachusetts colonists and prevented them from starving. When the colonists arrived, the Wampanoags had been weakened by disease and conflict with their rivals, the Narragansetts. Massasoit made an alliance with the Pilgrims.
Metacom, like many Native Americans, was known by various names at various stages in his life. These names included Pometacom, Metacomet, and King Philip. He succeeded his father as elected chief, or sachem, and initially pursued his father's peaceful policy toward the colonists. However, the colonists continued encroaching onto Wanpanoag land, and the Iroquois Confederacy pushed other tribes into Wampanoags territory from the west. Soon, tensions and incidents escalated, and Metacom came to the conclusion that the colonists had to be pushed out of New England. He made alliances with other New England tribes. After the colonists hanged three Wampanoags for the murder of another Wanpanoag, Metacom launched what came to be known as King Philip's War, 1675-1678.
King Philip's War is considered the bloodiest war per capita (in proportion to population) in American history. Several hundred colonists were killed, more than half of the New England settlements were attacked, and thousands of Native Americans were dead. At war's end, Metacom was dead, and the Wampanoags and their allies had been either killed, sold into slavery in the West Indies, or pushed westward toward the Great Lakes. It was effectively the last Indian resistance in the region.
While there are essentially no accounts of King Philip's war from the Native American viewpoint, historian Jill Lepore points out that there are numerous contemporary white accounts that have shaped the history of the war. The most famous perhaps is the account of Mary Rowlandson, a minister's wife who was captured by Indians, along with her three children, in February 1676. The youngest child, a six-year old named Sarah, died a week later, but Mary and the two older children survived captivity for 11 weeks before being ransomed.
Six years later, she published her narrative of her ordeal, and it went through four printings almost immediately. It was one of the earliest books published in the colonies, and is often considered the first "American bestseller," both in the colonies and in Britain.
Place.
For much of 1675, the Narragansetts of Rhode Island had tried to remain neutral in King Philip's War against the New England colonists. Because they feared the Narragansetts would join the war in the spring, the colonists started attacking Narragansett villages, causing the tribe to retreat into the Great Swamp near Kingston, Rhode Island.
On December 19, 1675, a colonial militia, accompanied by 150 Pequots and Mohegans attacked the Great Swamp fort. About 100 Narragansett warriors and between 300 and 1,000 noncombatants (women and children), were killed. Escaping Indians moved deeper into the frozen swamp, where hundreds more died from injuries or the harsh conditions. In 1906, a granite shaft was placed to mark the site. On October 23, 2021, the title to the five acres of the monument site was transferred to the Narragansett tribe to be held in perpetual trust.
Thing.
When Europeans first arrived on the Americas, no Native Americans were effectively using metals as anything but decoration. Among Eastern Woodland Indians, like the Wampanoag, Narragansett, and Pequot of New England, bows and arrows and spears were used for hunting and combat at a distance, but the standard weapon for combat was the war club. War clubs were made in different forms, generally hardened wooden clubs with a hard wooden or stone ball on one end. They were used in combat, hunting, and executions, as well as symbols of power and ceremony. While many Indians in King Philip's War had acquired muskets, clubs were still a major weapon.
The first picture is supposedly King Philip's personal club, supposedly inlaid with 104 purple and white shells on its shaft, denoting the people it's owner killed in battle. Supposedly, because none of that can be verified beyond doubt. It was acquired by an archaeologist in 1930 from a Maine woman who said that it had been in her family since 1676, the year of Metacom's (King Philip's) death.
It was stolen from the Fruitlands Museum in Massachusetts in 1970 and then purchased for $125 at 1995 estate sale and returned to the museum.
If you want to know more about King Philip's War and how history is written, or created, I highly recommend reading Jill Lepore's book, The Name of War.
Person.
Walter Francis White was born in Atlanta in 1893, the son of Atlanta University graduates who had become a postal worker and a teacher. He was of multiracial, majority European ancestry, enabling him to "pass" as white. Of his 32 great-great-great-grandparents, only five were black, but as far as he and his family, and Atlanta, were concerned, he was black.
He graduated from Atlanta University in 1916 and took a position with the Standard Life Insurance Company, a successful black-owned business founded in Atlanta. He worked to organize the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP, and, at the urging of James Weldon Johnson, moved to New York in 1918 and became an NAACP investigator. Because he looked white, he went undercover across the South investigating lynchings, even getting involved in local Ku Klux Klan organizations. During the Tulsa race riot, he was inadvertently deputized and told that he had free rein to shoot other black people. He narrowly escaped discovery several times, and his reports were published by the NAACP and black newspapers, serving as important documentation, even if the government and legal system did nothing. He published his autobiography, A Man Called White, in 1948. He served as Executive Secretary of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955.
Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece created the graphic novels Incognegro and Incognegro Renaissance and based the lead character, Zane Pinchback, on Walter White.
White Lies, by A.J. Baime is set to be published in February, and it's definitely on my list. There is so much more to learn about White, but he's one of those great people left out of history books.
Place.
Walter White, the inspiration for the graphic novels Incognegro and Incognegro Renaissance, and his parents all graduated from Atlanta University. Atlanta University was founded in 1865 by the American Missionary Association, with assistance from the Freedman's Bureau, and it is the oldest graduate institution serving a predominantly black student body. By the 1870s, AU was supplying black teachers and librarians to public schools across the South. Among its most famous and accomplished faculty members was Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, who spent 23 years there.
In the 1930s, it was decided to associate AU with Clark, Morehouse, and Spelman Colleges to eventually form the Clark Atlanta University Complex we know today.
Things.
Walter White, the inspiration for the graphic novels Incognegro and Incognegro Renaissance, spent his first years with the NAACP as an investigator of lynchings and racial violence across the South. Because of his fair complexion, he could pose as a white man and gather information and put himself into situations that a darker investigator couldn't.
Racial violence and lynchings hit a new high in 1920s America, along with the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. The NAACP prioritized anti-lynching legislation as one of its goals. The organization investigated and publicized murders in their publications and provided information to black newspapers and held silent marches, rallies, and meetings to call attention to the murders.
Person.
While I have always found Winston Churchill to be one of the most compelling characters in history, he seemed to have had a moment a few years ago, when great movies like "Darkest Hour" and "Churchill" were released. Erik Larson, the master of narrative nonfiction, published The Splendid and the Vile in 2020, and it's probably my favorite Larson book to date. It's the story of Churchill and Britain during his first year as Prime Minister, the year of the Blitz, when Britain was alone and teetering on the edge of collapse.
As much as I knew about Churchill, I knew very little about his wife of 56 years, Clementine (pronounced Clemen-teen). She is just as much a great character as Winston, which makes sense. Imagine being married to Winston for 56 years.
Clementine was nobility in her own right, the legal daughter of Sir Henry and Lady Blanche Hozier. (Legally, because both were guilty of numerous infidelities, and Clementine's paternity is a mystery. They spent most of their marriage apart ) She met Winston in 1904, and they married in 1908. They had five children. During his political career, she could be both Winston's harshest critic at times and his greatest defender. She was an important sounding board for him. During the war, she was almost as visible as Winston, and she led numerous humanitarian organizations.
Place.
The Churchill War Rooms museum is one of five branches of the Imperial War Museum, located beneath the Treasury building in the Whitehall area of Westminster. Construction began in 1938, and the installation housed the British command center throughout WWII. In total, 115 cabinet meetings were held there from 1939 to 1945, and Churchill made four of his famous wartime radio broadcasts from there. Although he had a bedroom outfitted there, Churchill preferred to sleep at 10 Downing Street or the annex directly above the Cabinet War Rooms.
Things.
In June 1915, Winston Churchill was at the lowest point of his political career. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill had been responsible for the planning and execution of the invasion of Gallipoli, one of the most disastrous events in British military history. Practically everyone, including Churchill, thought his political career was dead.
Churchill was already prone to bouts of depression, which he referred to as his "black dog." However, in the summer of 1915, his sister-in-law introduced him to painting. He took to it immediately, and painting became his therapy. He ended up painting over 500 canvases, giving most of them away.
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