147th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. panoramic photograph.

From the Presbyterian Historical Archives

Detail of photo, Jesse Halsey back row in flat cap

 

Guests of Honor at Tea

14 June 1941 | Cincinnati Enquirer

Guests of Honor at Tea

Mrs. Jesse H. Halsey and her two interesting daughters, Miss Helen Halsey and Miss Abigail Halsey, were the charming guests of honor at a tea given yesterday afternoon at Blue Hills, Mrs. Dwight Hinckley’s attractive residence in Mount Washington.

This tribute to Mrs. Halsey, who with Rev. Mr. Halsey, pastor of Seventh Presbyterian Church, will be leaving soon to take up their residence in Chicago, and the two daughters of this household was arranged by Mrs. W. E. Talbert’s Bible Class. It assembled the women of the parish.

Masses of fragrant flowers sent as a tribute of admiration and friendship, combined with some of the superb lilies and other summer flowers from Mrs. Hinckley’s garden, were used to decorate the spacious living room, the dining room, and the terrace.

Mrs. Halsey, who is pictured above, with Miss Helen Halsey at the left and Miss Abigail Halsey at the right, wore a afternoon gown of chiffon flowered in vivid tones. Her should bouquet was of orchids.

Miss Helen Halsey and her sister wore gowns of soft blue, similar in design. Outlining the square neckline were inset bands of narrow lace, a broader panel of white lace being appliquéd to the souffant skirts. With these becoming frocks each wore a strand of waxy white camellias . . .

Church Has Own Print Shop and Issues Paper

The Messenger | 1940

The Messenger | February 8, MCMXX

Almost without warning death came to United State District Judge Howard C. Hollister.

Cincinnati Enquirer

25 September 1919

In the library of his home, Baker place, on Madison road, at Walnut Hills, a few minutes after 7 o'clock last night. Although not feeling well since his return September 8 from an extended trip with Mrs. Hollister to the Northwest. Judge Hollister did not regard his condition, to b at all serious. He contracted a cold while away, and complained of a difficulty m breathing. Yesterday morning Judge Hollister went to his courtroom and remained until 2:55 o'clock yesterday afternoon. He told his private secretary. Miss Bessie Colling, to phone to Dr. Emmanuel Schwab to make an appointment to see him.

On his way home Judge Hollister saw Dr. Schwab, who gave him a prescription and reassured him. Just before sitting down to dinner with Mrs. Hollister their daughter Evelyn, wife of William Perry, an Indianapolis railroad man, and two sons, John B. and George, Judge Hollister was taken violently. Dr. Schwab was summoned and Dr. Allen Ramsey also was called in. They did all possible, but Judge Hollister did not rally. He was fully conscious when he died. The cause of his death, Dr. Schwab said, was pulmonary oedema, superinduced by heart disease.

Transacts Court Business.

In spite of feeling badly in the morning, Judge Hollister attended to great deal of Count business. His last official act was to postpone the hearing from Saturday to Monday of the cases of Thomas Hammerschraidt and 12 associates, recently convicted of conspiracy to defeat the draft act, and who were seeking a new trial.

Howard K. Hollister, the only one of his children not at home when his father died, is in New York. Howard Clark Hollister was born on Southern avenue, Mt. Auburn, September 11, 1856. His father, George I Hollister, came to Cincinnati from Vermont, and for several years Judge Hollister represented that state on the Board of Governor of the New England Society. The mother of Judge Hollister, Laura Strait Hollister, was a daughter of Thomas J. Strait, one of the most successful of the early lawyers at the Cincinnati bar. He began practice in this city in 1826. On both sides Judge Hollister was of colonial and revolutionary stock. He had three great-grandfathers who were soldiers in the Revolutionary War. In his boyhood Judge Hollister attended the district Intermediate and High schools, he later took a course of preparation for Yale at Orelock Institute, Williamson. Mass., and, after entering Yale, was graduated from that institution in 1878, in the same class with William H. Taft, afterward President of the United States, and the late Judge William L. Dickson, who were friends of his days in the primary schools of Cincinnati. Another close friend was former Judge Rufus B. Smith.

Admitted To Bar in 1880. After studying law in his father's office Judge Hollister went to the Cincinnati Law School and in the spring of 1880 was admitted to practice by the Supreme Court of Ohio. He served as Assistant Prosecuting Attorney or Hamilton County In 1881 and 1882. He was elected Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1893 and re-elected for a second term, serving in all ten years on the Hamilton County Common Pleas bench. At the end of his judicial term Judge Hollister resumed practice of the law with his two brothers, Thomas and Burton P. Hollister. In March, 1910, his lifelong friend, President Taft, appointed Judge Hollister to be United States District Judge to succeed the late Judge Albert Thompson. During his nearly 10 years on the United State bench, Judge Hollister tried many cases, which attracted national attention. He presided at the trial and conviction of President John H. Patterson and other officials of the National Cash Register Company, accused of violation of the provisions of the Sherman anti-trust act. Later the verdict of the jury and rulings of Judge Hollister were reversed and the defendants acquitted. More recently was the Van Tress case. In which Roy Van Tress and his associates of the McAlester Real Estate Exchange, were tried and convicted of conspiracy to misuse the mails to defraud in connection with the sale of Oklahoma lands. Van Tress and his co-defendants were sentenced, but are awaiting the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals on a new trial.

Fought County Organisation.

Judge Hollister was a strong Republican In national affairs, but (fought the Hamilton County Republican Organisation bitterly at times after his retirement from the Common Pleas bench. He was an elder in Walnut Hills Presbyterian Church and a devout member of that congregation.

Judge Hollister was married June 2 1887 to Miss Alice Keys, daughter of Samuel B. and Julia Baker Keys. The three sons of Judge Hollister entered the military service to their country during the recent war.

On Building a House

By Jesse Halsey c1929

Mr. Hoover says that building a house, under modern conditions in America, is as difficult as negotiating a foreign treaty. Having gone into Russia and Poland on diplomatic errands during the way for the State Department, I agree.

I had been having miserable headaches. “No cure;” “Vacuum;”“Inherited;” “Grin and bear it;” said a procession of doctors. But from one,“Exercise and serum.”

The inoculations each morning at the hospital made me more miserable than ever, and work in the study became impossible. I don’t like golf, so I bought some backlots at the topnotch prices of three years ago and, after the morning visit to the hospital, would get into overalls and go to gardening in these lots five miles from where I live.

Summer was coming on. I have two boys in their late teenswith some practical ability. They wanted exercise, but don’t like gardening.

I neglected to say that I am a preacher, in a church in the quarter of our city considered fashionable. But, having been a missionary with some responsibilities for business and building enterprises, I am not altogether ignorant of construction, and the problems connected with building. Having grown up on a farm, the use of a saw, axe, shovel, pipe threading tools, and a soldering iron has for a long time been in my equipment, though seldom useful in the sort of parish that I now serve.

I needed more violent exercise to combat the ‘misery’induced by the serum, and a job for the boys, so we set out to build a house on one of our vacant lots. My more or less crude sketches an architect friend put into drawings that would be intelligible at the City Hall; and then we started.

First, a road had to be built. Just where our lots began the street ended abruptly, in a great gully. At the City Hall I found that a level had never been established and, though a sewer ran down through the property (later I found it wasn’t paid for), no street grade had been set and, in fact, there was question whether the road had ever been dedicated. A village had been annexed by the city and no record remained of the village ever having accepted our part of the road! So I went to a lawyer friend, whose first judgment indicated action by City Council. Having served on the Mayor’s campaign committee (non-partisan ticket), I felt free to take minutes of his official time, I was directed to the councilman who had the major responsibility for roads and sewers. After two appointments, broken by him, I caught him and ‘he would see what could be done.’

Water must be introduced so I started that process. The City Manager, a member of my congregation, said he had no jurisdiction. To the superintendent of the water works I went. He turned me over to a deputy, an old Scotchman, who, when he found I had studied theology in Edinburgh, was my sworn friend and guide.

And I needed one, for we found that there wasn’t a main pipe line within five hundred feet of our property, and that each of the houses on that main portion of our road had a separate small pipe line five or six hundred feet in length.

The ruling is that no new small lines should be put in, but there was no way to make the houses that now had water from their small privately owned lines pay for putting in a main line that would lead to the beginning of our lots. This also entailed village annexation. It meant that the entire cost of an eight inch main from the nearest street, six hundred feet away, must be paid by us and that, when it was in the houses on the upper part of the street, must be connected to this main at my expense. It seemed hopeless; the cost was twice the price of the lots!

The Mayor, the Manager, the Councilman, the lawyer—several calls on each—but at length my Scottish friend found a way for the superintendent to order the line carried to the beginning of our new street (if we had one).

In the City Surveyor’s office, while I studied the maps of the erstwhile village, I found a middle-aged engineer, who told me that his first job as a cub was surveying my road. He would set the grades. This was a real help, for his chief, the City Engineer, had failed to keep an appointment on the site (it wasn’t on the map and he couldn’t find the place).

So, one night after hours the ex-surveyor ran the grades across our gully, set the curb line and got his chief’s approval and O.K. When I offered to pay him, he said he wanted nothing but, if I was willing to trade work, he would ask me to do something for him. I was willing. He wanted me to marry him to another; which I did some weeks later! And, so far as I know, they have lived happily ever since.

But my house was not so easily negotiated. With the water in and the grade set, we began to fill. School was out, my boys spent most of their days at the job, and I gave the mornings to the hospital shot and the garden, the City Hall and the road.

Load after load of filler was required. A friend who wrecks old buildings gave me, for the hauling, many loads of old brickbats and, with these, we started to fill the almost bottomless pit.

The dust was terrible and one of the neighbors threatened to sue. We got a hose and the older boy finally got a barrel of crude oil and sprinkled over the debris before it was shifted and leveled to grade. Even then the dust and lime went up like a cloud of smoke.