The Grip: Seldom Told Tales of Helen Isham Halsey

Helen Isham Halsey & Charles Henry II, Newfoundland, 1911

Not only was life with a clergyman "quite a change of pace for the patrician Helen," after sailing alone for twenty-one days with her two boys, ages 18 mos and 2 mos, and two teenage charges through a massive hurricane from Newfoundland to the states on board a ship transporting a black bear bound for the Boston Zoo and on which there was also a fire, it seems that my great grandmother Helen, in her third winter in Cincinnati, found herself with three children under age 5 in the midst of a nationwide epidemic of The Grip.

Helen Caroline Isham Halsey, Cincinnati, 1933

from THE "GRIP" EPIDEMIC OF THE WINTER OF 1915-1916, Louis I. DUBLIN, PH. D., Statistician, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York City.

Early last winter the country experienced a severe epidemic of what was popularly called 'grip.' It started in December and reached its height in the middle of January. The disease seems to have swept the entire land, moving from west to east. The duration of the epidemic in anyone locality was from six to eight weeks. It is not an exaggeration to state that in certain cities from 40 to 50 percent of the population was affected. As a result the general death rate was appreciably increased, and this made itself especially felt in a markedly higher mortality from lobar pneumonia.

The profound influence of the epidemic upon the mortality of the country may be seen in the returns already at hand from some of our largest cities . . . In 1915-1916, the number of deaths from influenza in this group of cities was increased more than sevenfold in comparison with 1914-1915. Apparently the most marked change occurred in Cincinnati [2 deaths from influenza in 1914-1915; 81 in 1915-1916], but without exception there was a marked rise in the number of deaths in every one of the cities. Pneumonia also shows a striking increase.

Helen & Charles Henry, Newfoundland, 1911

Helen's grandfather, Harry Isham, was a prominent wagon and sleigh maker, called by my great aunt "the Henry Ford of his time," who owned a factory in Plattsburgh during the second half of the 19th century. Helen's father, Frederick Isham, was educated at Columbia, graduated Columbia Law School in 1884, lived at 66 W 22nd Street while in law school, then engaged for a short time in some "entrepreneurial work" in Saranac Lake and married Laura Haynes, whom he knew from Plattsburgh.

Frederick and Laura had two children, Helen and Robert in 1890 and 1891, and the growing family soon moved to New York City where Frederick established a thriving law practice and they lived a life of comfort, luxury, and society "out in the country"--somewhere on the upper west side around 113th Street--partaking in the last vestiges of the Gilded Age with designated upstairs and downstairs maids, governesses and nannies for the children, and professional piano and singing lessons for both mother and daughter. While in New York, however, tragedy struck. Two of Helen's younger brothers, both born in the city, died from diphtheria in the mid-1890's. The family was so distraught by the boys' deaths, Helen's mother took her two surviving children back upstate and moved in with her Isham in-laws who had since given the Isham Wagon Company to their oldest son and retired to Lake Placid.

Following financial set backs resulting from the 1890's economic depression, Frederick rejoined his family and maintained homes in New York and Lake Placid to faciliate his law practice. He served two terms as mayor of Lake Placid and embarked on a lucrative business scheme developing homes for patients seeking tuberculosis treatment at the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium. (Ironically, Frederick Isham's grandson and namesake would spend the better part of a decade in and out of mental institutions following a schizophrenic break in 1932, eventually dying of tuberculosis contracted in the Cincinnati Sanitarium in 1939).

In 1905, tragedy struck the family again when Laura died in childbirth. Helen, 16 years old at the time, didn't even know her mother was pregnant. She came home from school one day and her mother was gone.

Helen Halsey on board Grenfell's schooner the George B. Cluett, 1912

Although she wanted to attend Vassar, Helen stayed in Lake Placid tending to her widower father as her younger brother went off to Exeter, Colgate, and NYU, and eventually joined his father's law firm. In 1909, Jesse Halsey was visiting his sister, Ibby, who was taking the cure at the sanatorium in Saranac Lake (Jesse's older brother Harry had died of TB, preventing Jesse from enrolling at Princeton as an undergraduate) and speaking on behalf of the Grenfell mission in the church in which Helen played the organ. As the story goes, the lights in the church went out and when they came on again, Jesse was sitting on the bench next to Helen. In much the same way, Jesse joined Sir Grenfell's organization in Newfoundland and Labrador. Upon being told that Grenfell's outpost wasn't in need of another minister, Jesse asked the Englishman what he did need. Grenfell said, "A plumber," and Jesse repied, "I'm your plumber." Jesse and Helen married in 1910 and immediately set off for missionary life in Newfoundland.

Jesse and Helen's oldest sons, Charles and Frederick, were born in hospital in St. Anthony, delivered by Dr. John Little, Jr. Later, when Jesse and Helen lived in Cincinnati the Little family resided in New Hampshire and Jesse and Helen and their children would occasionally visit.

"Tuckamne Croft" - Charles Henry & Helen I. Halsey, 1912

Each spring when the straits began to thaw in Newfoundland, Jesse traveled on dogsled from St. Anthony across the island to St. John's, then set sail in a schooner to Boston to retrieve all the supplies needed for the mission in the coming months. From the time he departed in April or May until his return several months later, Helen would not know anything about him. She didn't know where he was, when he would come back, whether a polar bear had eaten him, if he was adrift with the dogsled on an icepan, or whether he was alive or dead. He was gone for months on end and there was no communication between the two of them whatsoever. By the time Jesse made the return trek, the harbor had melted and he sailed directly into St. Anthony.

Every afternoon in the spring of 1912, awaiting Jesse's return from the annual supply trip and pregnant with Frederick, Helen held tightly onto the little boy Charles's hand and walked out onto the rocky cliffs of the peninsula to watch for the sails of ships coming back into the harbor.

The photos of Helen on board the Geo. B. Cluett, and Helen and Charles Halsey on the dogsled in Newfoundland are courtesy of Con Crowley, from a collection of photos belonging to his grandfather, Captain Ed White, Jr., who sailed on the crew of Grenfell's schooner from Newfoundland to Boston with Helen et al in October 1912.