Comstock and Halsey Wed

3 December 1936 | Hartford Courant

Somehow Christmas just doesn’t seem like Christmas without you and Mother, Honey, Abbie, and dear old Freck and Bill.

 

25 Dec 1944 CH to J

Hotel Philadelphia

Westhampton, N.Y.

Christmas Day 1944

Dear Dad—

Merry Christmas! Wish we could all be there to wish you all that greeting. Maybe some Christmas we can all be together in the old homestead. What fun that would be. Somehow Christmas just doesn’t seem like Christmas without you and Mother, Honey, Abbie, and dear old Freck and Bill. I look back on those days in Cincinnati, what a job you and Mother must have had selecting the things for your children, trying to satisfy each and everyone of us. Then too we had a lot of Fairy God Fathers and Mothers whose Christmas gifts were usually those of untold splendor. I am using today a toolbox and a beautiful set of augur bits, given to Freck and me by Mrs. Smythe or Miss Becky many years ago. Even Freck’s old lathe that “Santa” brought him works in my shop. Somewhere in Southampton a train engine locomotor waits for future use given by Mrs. Reed [Pauline Carson Foster Reed, Mrs. C.L. Reed]. There are other things I don’t remember, but which I still have around.

Today we received a present that has been the trump of the day and the grandest gift imaginable from the swellest person I know. War Bonds for all four of us from My Dad—I can’t begin to thank you . . . I don’t know how, but any way we appreciate them more than words can express.

Today I am lazy and nearly exhausted—for nearly a month my machines have been busy sawing, drilling, etc., making toys. Then week before last I stayed in on my work full time usually from 9 AM to after midnight. In that time I made a barn, a train, a farm wagon model with team, a doll house, and drilled several cradles, in addition to the one that went to Sophie. Each and every item was sold representing about 50 dollars worth of toys. On top of that I made a gun for Chaddie and a rocking horse for Billy. I finished the latter at 11 last night. It is a cute little horse and cuter still when its young master swings into the saddle and rides away. He can really make it go.

Abbie certainly showered Chaddie with presents, we had a box from her and in it was a machine gun, a helmet, and a periscope. He is tickled pink with the helmet as well as the other equipment.

It looks as though we might have a white Christmas. It snowed last Monday and it snowed quite a bit, although there is still quite a bit on the ground it is going fast.  Today has been above freezing and it’s a heavy fog all day and occasional rain.

THANK YOU FOR MY BOND –BILLY

Fran just plopped his majesty in my lap and I thought he better learn to write early—

Friday morning I played Santa at the school party. Charlie is not at all sure it was Santa in fact he had a darn good notion it was me. When he came home I was working in my shop when I came upstairs he looked me over very closely. I had make up on, but washed it all off. My lips however showed signs of having been actual.  He mentioned the fact that I had paint on my face and he was quite positive that I was Santa. We changed the subject so may be he has forgotten.

There has been ice in the bay for a week or so, at last maybe with this thaw we are having I will break up enough to be able to go out and make a couple of dollars. If N.Y. has a meat shortage, which is threatened by the dealers or something, maybe clams should sell at a good price.

I wish you all could have been here today to help eat our 32# turkey. Next year I will have to raise some so that you can have one for Thanksgiving day and Christmas. Maybe a goose for New Years.

Our box went express last Thursday I hope it arrived in time to greet you today. Yours will be here I guess sometime this week as you said it was sent express on Thursday.

Thanks again from the 4 of us for your wonderful gifts.

A Merry Christmas—belated but in time to wish you a very Happy New Year.

Love from us all.

Your son,

Charles

ALL SOULS Acts 27:37

This is much that I love in this 1934 sermon written by my great-grandfather, Reverend Jesse Halsey, and much which still seems so relevant 82 years later. But these lines in particular strike me as  important: "Serious thought has been forced upon us and as we revamp our plans for the future, in the Spirit of Christ, regardless of what our traditional religious prejudices have indicated, we ought to go forward with our main reliance on the Ethical Gospel of our Lord. There is salvation in no other Name; and that, in the barest terms, He said, was to love God with heart, soul, and mind--and one's neighbor as one’s self."

Jesse Halsey, Sir Grenfell, Charles Halsey, c. 1930 | Peconic Bay

ALL SOULS Acts 27:37

“And we were in all in the ship two hundred, threescore and sixteen souls."

The ship in which Paul sailed toward Rome can be taken as a cross-section of society—then or now. The capitalistic owner and galley slaves. Sailors and land lubbers. Prisoners and police. Soldiers and civilians. A minister of the gospel, a writer, a physician—all sorts and conditions of men.

The Morro Castle disaster apparently is not the first time when sailors showed the “white feather.” Under pretext of putting out an anchor, the sailors on the SS “Castor and Pollux” sought to escape in the one remaining lifeboat. Paul’s word to the Centurion, “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved,” is a good word for each individual and group in our divided society, today. Each needs the other. It is impossible for the nation to come to its best or to go forward in any marked way, without the contribution that each group can make. There must be some common denominator.

This is equally true for all groups. The Catholic has something to add to our national life. We deeply sympathize with his insistence that religion enter into the education of children and if, by constitutional means, he can secure public funds, as good citizens and believers in democracy, I suppose, we will submit. On the other hand, we will make a vigorous fight to prevent this very thing, believing that our best contribution will be in support of a non-sectarian school system. The trouble with this situation is that most Protestants are anti-Catholic rather than pro-Protestant. For traditional and real causes they will fight Catholics, but when it comes to a positive support of their own churches, they are sadly lacking. Witness the attendance at worship in this church this morning, or in any other Protestant church in the city, unless it happens to be some anniversary or special occasion. A Protestantism that represents only animus toward other groups is entirely beside the point and unworthy.

I am ashamed to make any reference to my next point. It seems so obvious that denominational bounds within Protestantism are outgrown and “out-moded,” and yet we are farther away from any kind of coherent church unity than we were when I began my ministry, twenty-five years ago. The “world” outside, that incidentally contains many discerning people of good will, has little sympathy with our “unhealthy divisions.” They are a crying shame to heaven.

The first step toward a larger unity has been made in the Federal Council, which has had widely representative and capable leadership. No man today speaks with more spiritual authority and keen intelligence than Bishop McConnell, who speaks in our city next Sunday night. He has been one of the guiding spirits of the Federal Council.

The report on the steel situation fifteen years ago, violently opposed at the time, is now recognized as a masterly document that solved a problem in the field of labor that the government in Washington had failed to adjust. This report is an ample vindication of the Council and of future efforts in that direction from the same source, provided they be guided by the principle, which I would call Bishop McConnell’s “Principle of Prophesy,” which briefly is this: On the basis of the best information available, unprejudiced and gathered by experts from all sources, let the Church, in the name of justice and good will, indicate to economic and industrial groups the just policy, and you will have a prophetic voice speaking in no uncertain tones along lines that can be profitably followed. Put human interests ahead of property interests, with all the sanity and knowledge available! Apply the basic principles of the Gospel and the Church can still exercise its prophetic function. That endowment of power in other days came upon individuals, and that may happen again. But, more likely, it is destined in the future to speak through the combined intelligence of the Group.

Yes, we need each other. The Pacifist, in this present evil world, still needs the Militarist. Somewhere, between the two extremes, the public course must be charted. There are too many dangers for complete disarmament. On the other hand, all the enthusiasm of the sincere lovers of peace, all the good sense of statesmen, is needed to prevent the recurrence of war. It is an open question whether war ever accomplished any good commensurate with its awful cost. Nine-tenths of all our present day poverty, moral and economic alike, the world around, can be charged up to the Great War. On this I feel strongly and would defend the right of any lover of peace, no matter how extreme, to have his say. But I am enough of a realist to know that in order to make substantial progress, any program, whether it be promoted by churchmen or politicians, must give the assurance of national security to citizens of my country in order to gain their support, tacit or enthusiastic. But more of this next Sunday, which happens to be Armistice Day.

In the present county elections the ugly form of Nazism rears its head. We owe a great debt to our Jewish citizens. In this city they are among our most intelligent and generous philanthropists. This has been true for nearly a century. In the religious field, they have been given a surprising number of outstanding leaders in our city. Culturally and economically they have been a great asset. In the last decade they have proved stalwart supporters, and furnished striking leadership for, the desperate political situation of this municipality. But, I predict that the election next Tuesday will temporarily eliminate some of our most useful public servants simply because they are Jews, for an over-seas hatred, due to historical and racial reasons, finds a strong reflection in “Zinzinnati.” “My beloved brethren, these things ought not so to be” . . . . “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.”

Now I ask you, as I ask myself, what are the forces that cohere? What are the things that bind us together? This multitude of all sorts, who travel in the same ship of state. [With us, as of old, there are prisoners, and the problems of the under-world and the gangsters are forced home upon us every day. What have we to offset this and the hundred other ills that afflict us?

This was a food ship, in which St. Paul traveled, carrying to Rome the wheat for the daily dole. Our relief situation is nothing new. Make it acute enough however, and you have the seeds of revolution sprouting fast.]

I should say that very likely in American life the thing that most nearly binds us together into anything like a common unity is the Public School, which is worthy of our support in the present or any other tax levy; not for the mere learning of the Three R’s, but enough money available for adequate equipment and a well-paid teaching staff that has had access to all the educational and cultural advantages of our time, that they may pass these on, consciously and unconsciously, to our children. Not a stereotyped, inflexible system that teaches by rote the ‘Law of the Twelve Tables’ or an interpretation of the Constitution sanctioned by the Sons of the Revolution—or the Daughters, but an intelligent, constructive educational policy that teaches the value of all that is good in the past and yet recognizes the inevitability of change. Over every public school might be written into the motto: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

Organizations like the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, the present non-sectarian policies of the Y.W. and Y.M.C.A; these, and any other groups for young people or adults, that give them a cross-section of the community, that force people of all sorts and conditions to mix and to mingle—as they must have done on the little ship that sailed to Rome, these “two hundred, three score and sixteen souls,” learning to dislike each other and, in emergencies, to admire each other and depend upon each other for mutual help and support; all the things in our common life that acquaint us with each other, our strong cohesive forces.

And, the religion of Christ, by all means, ought to be one of these unifying factors. If Protestantism has been divisive, let us change its character. Paul said that Christ came to break down “a middle wall of partition” and that without this the Cross of Christ would become of no effect. Whatever the first century Christians may have done in this regard (there are the marks and wounds of strife in the Book of Acts), whatever they may have done or failed to do, our present interpretation of Christianity in Protestant circles is far from “breaking down” any walls. We have as many prejudices as have our Catholic neighbors, only theirs take a different form. Their united front and policy, of opposition to all who do not agree with them in theory, of course, is the very antithesis of the Gospel. Let it be a lesson to us.

Like these ancient mariners, we have thrown overboard much of the tackling of the ship. There is not much water between our keel and the rocks. Shipwreck may be ahead. If all abide in the ship, if there is a unified purpose of good will, all will come safe to land, though it may be on broken pieces of the ship.

No one is wise enough to predict the future. There are certain great and abiding principles that ought, however, to direct our life, individual and social. These have been defied; that is our trouble today. Old-fashioned honesty, a simple faith in action; these have been largely lacking in the setup of the last twenty years. We have become too sophisticated. There are many new helps to navigation, thanks to Lord Kelvin and a hundred others, but none of them can afford to neglect the stars. Like these ancient sailors, “we have cast our anchors out of the stern and long for the day.” Serious thought has been forced upon us and as we revamp our plans for the future, in the Spirit of Christ, regardless of what our traditional religious prejudices have indicated, we ought to go forward with our main reliance on the Ethical Gospel of our Lord. There is salvation in no other Name; and that, in the barest terms, He said, was to love God with heart, soul, and mind--and one's neighbor as one’s self.

We need a new infusion of the fear of the Lord, reverence for the Highest and Best, a new appreciation of good will and brotherhood, a baptism of the spirit of love that suffers long and is kind, that never fails and cannot fail.

In a neighboring factory, one day last week, an emery wheel “let go,” as they say, and flying off into space, worked havoc. Something in the conglomerate composition of the carborundum was not able to stand the stress, and break-up resulted. This is a picture, to many contemporary minds, of our civilization. It is flying to pieces. On the other hand, there are many whose picture is much more moderate. Forces of disintegration are undoubtedly at work, they say, and for better or for worse, changes have come and are coming; but the essential fabric is sound. The emery wheel still revolves and has cutting quality, though its spindle may be slightly eccentric.

No one but the extreme Tory believes that the machinery of our social and political life is in anything like perfect alignment. To begin with, there are no end of personal and party differences. The President last week very pointedly told the bankers that their group did not agree among themselves. There is certainly a divided counsel in the administration itself. No one can predict whether it will swing right or left. Take any church group, and it is hard to find a dozen people who absolutely agree about any one thing.

Four ministers sat at lunch last Friday. After rather vigorously criticizing the President, one of them pointed out that if they four were committed with the destiny and policy of their own denomination, they could not agree among themselves, not only in details of administration, but on some points of, what their fathers would have considered, basic theology.

Everywhere you find it:

Catholic versus Protestant

Jew versus Gentile

Democrat versus Republican

Charter versus Organization

Blacks versus Whites

Capital versus Labor

The haves versus the have-nots

Conservative versus Radical

Pacifist versus Militarists

The list could easily be doubled. It looks like a football schedule, only in this game there is generally less sportsmanship than is manifest on the intercollegiate gridiron. What is it, then, that holds our conglomerate society together? With all the causes of faction and division, what is it that makes the whole cohere? There must be something in the life of our body politics, for in spite of all the disruptive forces, in peace and in war, the nation, for over one hundred and fifty years, has held together.

It is encouraging to note, in the first place, that these divisions are nothing new. The present agitation in political circles, induced by Catholic interest in public school money, is a mere echo of the thunders of the “Know-Nothing” agitations of sixty years ago. We will always have some “Klansmen” with us. Likely, all that we can ask is that they go unmasked.

The newer and more accurate historians of our Revolutionary War indicate very clearly that sentiment in the colonies was anything but unified. John Adams says that in Massachusetts, likely the most patriotic colony, nearly forty-five percent of the people were opposed to the Revolution. (Curiously enough, the loyal people in those days were those that supported the king. In this case, as often, the revolutionist of one period becomes the patriot of another.)

"Blessed are those who give for they shall receive."

Cincinnati c.1924

Jesse Halsey (middle, back), Charles and Helen Halsey (front); two men in back possibly Henry Monning, Scoutmaster and/or Charles W. Casey, Sexton at Seventh

Confirmation Class | 1926

Seventh Presbyterian Church | Cincinnati | c1926

Christmas 1953

Helen & Jesse Halsey Christmas Card | 1953

Season's Greetings | 1944

1944 Christmas Card | Westhampton

Westhampton, N.Y.

Christmas Day

1944

Dear Dad—

Merry Christmas! Wish we could all be there to wish you all that greeting. Maybe some Christmas we can all be together in the old homestead. What fun that would be. Somehow Christmas just doesn’t seem like Christmas without you and Mother, Honey, Abbie, and dear old Freck and Bill. I look back on those days in Cincinnati, what a job you and Mother must have had selecting the things for your children, trying to satisfy each and everyone of us. Then too we had a lot of Fairy God Fathers and Mothers whose Christmas gifts were usually those of untold splendor. I am using today a toolbox and a beautiful set of augur bits, given to Freck and me by Mrs. Smythe or Miss Becky many years ago. Even Freck’s old lathe that “Santa” brought him works in my shop. Somewhere in Southampton a train engine locomotor waits for future use given by Mrs. Reed. There are other things I don’t remember, but which I still have around.

Today we received a present that has been the trump of the day and the grandest gift imaginable from the swellest person I know. War Bonds for all four of us from My Dad—I can’t begin to thank you . . . I don’t know how, but any way we appreciatie them more than words can express.

Today I am lazy and nearly exhausted—for nearly a month my machines have been busy sawing, drilling, etc., making toys. Then week before last I stayed in on my work full time usually from 9 AM to after midnight. In that time I made a barn, a train, a farm wagon model with team, a doll house, and drilled several cradles, in addition to the one that went to Sophie. Each and every item was sold representing about 50 dollars worth of toys. On top of that I made a gun for Chaddie and a rocking horse for Billy. I finished the latter at 11 last night. It is a cute little horse and cuter still when its young master swings into the saddle and rides away. He can really make it go.

Abbie certainly showered Chaddie with presents, we had a box from her and in it was a machine gun, a helmet, and a periscope. He is tickled pink with the helmet as well as the other equipment.

It looks as though we might have a white Christmas. It snowed last Monday and it snowed quite a bit, although there is still quite a bit on the ground it is going fast.  Today has been above freezing and it’s a heavy fog all day and occasional rain.

THANK YOU FOR MY BOND –BILLY

Fran just plopped his majesty in my lap and I thought he better learn to write early—

Friday morning I played Santa at the school party. Charlie is not at all sure it was Santa in fact he had a darn good notion it was me. When he came home I was working in my shop when I came upstairs he looked me over very closely. I had make up on, but washed it all off. My lips however showed signs of having been actual.  He mentioned the fact that I had paint on my face and he was quite positive that I was Santa. We changed the subject so may be he has forgotten.

There has been ice in the bay for a week or so, at last maybe with this thaw we are having I will break up enough to be able to go out and make a couple of dollars. If N.Y. has a meat shortage, which is threatened by the dealers or something, maybe clams should sell at a good price.

I wish you all could have been here today to help eat our 32# turkey. Next year I will have to raise some so that you can have one for Thanksgiving day and Christmas. Maybe a goose for New Years.

Our box went express last Thursday I hope it arrived in time to greet you today. Yours will be here I guess sometime this week as you said it was sent express on Thursday.

Before I forget.

Charlie’s Birthday Aug. 5, 1936

Billy’s Birthday Nov. 3, 1943

Jean Grace Raynor May 16, 1944

Thanks again the 4 of us for your wonderful gifts.

A Merry Christmas—belated but in time to wish you a very Happy New Year.

Love from us all.

Your son,

Charles

Seasons Greetings

Helen and Jesse Halsey Christmas Card | 1950

Marriage Notes for Dorothy Pearson and Edward White

Edward Post White, Jr., Dorothy May Pearson White, and Edward Pearson White (circa 1927)

WHITE-PEARSON NUPTIALS CULMINATION OF ROMANCE
 
Miss Pearson, of Bermuda, weds Captain Edward P. White, Jr.
 
      The Old Post House was the scene on Saturday evening [26 Jun 1923] ,of a very beautiful home wedding when Miss Dorothy May Pearson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James R. Pearson, of St. George's, Bermuda, was united in marriage to Capt. Edward Post White, Jr., of this village.
      About sixty near relatives and family friends were present to extend their good wishes and the occasion was a very informal one. The very impressive ceremony, in which the ring was used, was performed by the Rev. Jesse Halsey of Cincinnati, Ohio, an uncle of the bridegroom. Miss Daisy Pearson, sister of the bride, was maid of honour. The bride was given away by her mother and the best man was Harry Halsey White, the bridegroom's brother. Elizabeth White was bridesmaid; Helen Halsey and Nancy Herrick were flowers girls; Charles and Frederick Halsey were the pages.
      The bridal arch was of Dorothy Perkins roses. Pink roses and seasonal garden flowers were everywhere about the living rooms. The bride was gowned in white georgette over white satin with veil of tulle and orange blossoms. Her bouquet of Marechal Niel roses. The bridesmaids wore white over pink and carried bouquets of pink and white sweet peas. The flower girls were in pink carrying baskets of sweet peas. The bride's mother wore grey and carried lavender and pink sweet peas. The wedding march was played by Francis Moore of New York, who rendered also, several musical selections and just before the entrance of the bridal party, "Because," by Teschmacher, was sung by Edwin Swain.
      After the ceremony the bridal couple received the congratulations of their friends and a collation was served The wedding cake, made by the bride, by an old family recipe, was brought from Bermuda with her.
      Many beautiful and useful gifts were presented to the young couple, both by friends here and in Bermuda, where a farewell reception had been given for Miss Pearson just before she left her Island home.
      After some difficulty in getting away the bridal couple left for a short wedding journey, after which they will be at home with the bridegroom's parents for a few weeks until sailing for Galveston, where Capt. White is making his headquarters at present.
      The marriage marks another milestone in a romance which began during the war, when Capt. White, then second officer on the S.S. Pathfinder, paid an unexpected visit to Bermuda. The ship which was carrying foodstuffs and ammunition to Italian ports, lost her propeller in mid-ocean and for a week was drifting at the mercy of the January gales. Battered and out of provisions they were at last picked up by an English steamer and towed into Bermuda. Here, at this time, Capt. White and Miss Pearson met and though his errands on the sea have carried him to many ports, and Bermuda could very seldom become his destination, yet their romance has developed and reached its happy climax in their marriage on Saturday evening beneath the roof of the hospitable old house which has been the home of Capt. White's family for many generations.

Mission Schooner Arrives | Boston Evening Transcript

October 15, 1912

A Reminder of The Red Stairs | St. Anthony, Newfoundland

April 6, 1910

Facsimilie of letter from Grenfell to Charles and Freck

September 4, 1933

Telegram from Freck | 31 Aug 1931

Telegram from Freck | 26 Aug 1933

from "Down North" | c1941

One day in the late spring of 1907, I was riding to the University on one of those (then) novel double-decker trams that ran in Glasgow. (The paper, this very day as I write, shows a picture of two bombed and gutted standing inert on the car-track) when I noticed a meager item on an inside page of an evening paper of how a mission doctor in Labrador had been carried off shore on an ice flow and had lived to tell the story. That was the first I ever heard of Grenfell. Two years later, I was on his staff—not as preacher but as plumber.

It happened like this. He came to Princeton Seminary to speak for a week at Chapel. Chapel was a dreary performance held at the end of the afternoon with a handful present and a cut and dried professorial performance in exegesis as diet. I seldom went. But hearing that Grenfell was coming that day, I went and took several other fellows along. The place was filled the second day; and before the week was out the crowd jammed the largest hall on the University campus.

In one of his talks he told the story of that ice pan experience (of which I had read on the Glasgow bus), in another he intimated that students sometimes would “down” with him in the summer to do odd jobs. I made an appointment at the house of the professor where he was staying. “Yes,” he took students along to help; “What was I going to be?” “A preacher!” “No, he didn’t need a preacher, they had too many on the shore already. “Well,” I ventured, “What do you need?” “A plumber,” he snapped back, “a plumber for our new hospital.” I signed up, then and there, knowing that water runs down hill and inheriting from my practical builder-mason-grandfather, a manual knack for doing things, and knowing how to solder and wipe a joint, and a few other things, from a Yankee blacksmith who had a shop on the back street where I used to stop in to blow the bellows and fuss around on the way home from school.

In May (Divinity Schools have a short term), I started out for Labrador. It took nearly a month to get there, for it was a late season and the ice hugged the land so that schooners and mail boats couldn’t get “down along” shore. When we reached St. Anthony all set “to plumb” the hospital, I found that the hospital wasn’t even built. The Chief was like that: ambition always running ahead of any possible performance on the part of his helpers.

Not only was the hospital unbuilt, not even a foundation was in, no excavating done either. So after putting a new window in the log bunk house for light and air (terribly dull tools they had and my new plumber’s kit didn’t fit the wood working job, all their tools were dull except the axes; a Newfoundlander can build a ship with his ax and after I had fussed for half a day with brace and bit (dull in spite of my file) and key hold saw pecking at the logs, Old Skipper Joe Souley came along and in ten minutes with his ax cut the hole in the side of the bunk house where I installed my window.

There being no one more capable available, I set about excavating for the new hospital cellar. We struck solid rock. I knew nothing about blasting—except that one did it before building. (The Doctor having finished his first hospital realizing that it needed a cellar, undertook to blast one and blew off his roof.) Skipper Joe (my friend of the ax) had worked in a mine; he knew how to blast! But he didn’t know how to sharpen drills. Here my Yankee blacksmith came to my aid; (by quasi proxy). I had watched him and had a dim notion of how it was done and after considerable experimenting—just the right heat “cherry red” dipped at the right moment in oil, the drill was just the right temper, not too hard to be brittle and break under the sledge as it bit its way into the rock and not too soft—not cutting at all but just further blunting itself.

I would hold the drill; Joe would strike it with the big sledge, strike with an unerring accuracy; when my turn came to strike and he to hold, like the brave man he was, he held the drill while I swung the sledge, fortunately for him I never missed—my old grandfather coming to the rescue. (I am a great believer in ativism—or whatever it may be called. Cap’n Harry, my grandfather, was a skilled mason (he built most of Greenwich Village in New York, over a hundred years ago.) He once was known to have cut the center out of a millstone to convert it into a well curb, cut it—on a bet—in thirty minutes. He knew how to swing a maul; I’m sure he was there fifty years later, for my help. (What’s fifty years among Yankees?)

When the holes were drilled we began to blast. It was cold; dynamite will not explode when it is “frozen.” Joe would build a fire in the forge and put me to blowing the bellows, with a pail of water on the coals. When it began to boil he would pile sticks of dynamite cob-house fashion on the pail there to “thaw.” “Let out a reef, Skipper,” Joe would say. I would accelerate and the sparks would fly all round the pail and all over the dynamite. “No harm, Skipper, she can’t bust abroad without the cap.” When the sticks were sufficiently softened, Joe would cut a length of fuse and fasten on a cap (detonator) to the end of the fuse. The cap is a hollow tube an inch long made of soft, malleable copper. Joe would take the thing between his teeth (he had two that met) and craunch the cap on to the fuse. (When it became my turn (under his tutelage) I used the pliers (as Dupont suggested). Not so Skipper Joe Souley—“Teeth’s quicker.” Then we would insert the cap and fuse in a stick of dynamite, put it down in the drilled hole in the rock on top of one, two, or three other sticks of dynamite and then with a stick, tamp dirt into top of the hold. Then we’d pile a lot of logs on top with a few lengths of old anchor chain to (hold her down), light the fuse and run. At least I would run, Joe was too old, or too fat, or to lazy, or too proud to run. He would amble along and maybe get behind the forge house before the blast brought down its concomitant shower of small rocks and gravel.

It took all summer to build the hospital cellar and frame up the hospital. In the fall, I came back to Seminary in New York, bringing an esquimoux boy to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to learn lathe work and other things that I didn’t know much about. Theology played second fiddle, I fear, that winter. I got hold of an old friend who was a master plumber and heating engineer and learned to figure radiation, etc., etc., ad infinitum (to use theological language). By the next spring I had collected in Boston a schooner load of radiators, boilers, pipe fittings, tools, tile, linoleum, and what-not enough to plumb and heat the new hospital and the old hospital and several other hospitals and mission buildings at various stations along the shore.

In May (this is 1910), I graduated as a Bachelor of Divinity, was married, and in June set out for Labrador on a honeymoon.

There we stayed three summers, two winters. There our two older boys were born. There I would still be if I had been a doctor instead of a preacher. When the plumbing work was done, I became business manager for the mission. When the expert accountant, Price, Waterhouse recommended that the business office be put in St. John’s Newfoundland, rather than on the field, I lost interest in the business job, even though they had been interested in me. I had been buying thousands of dollars worth of supplies of all kinds, running a big schooner on several voyages back and forth as her skipper and how I ever kept out of jail with my accounts, I don’t quite know (or off the rocks with the schooner). It always puzzled me to make up a set of books that would balance and no wonder Price, Waterhouse wanted an accountant and not a preacher.

--Reverend Jesse Halsey

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | July 1911

St. Anthony Items

Evening classes have been held for older persons, and for the more advanced of the boys and girls by Mr. Halsey, and Mr. Wright. Miss Brown has also held dressmaking classes for the maids, with the object of enabling them to save expense by manufacturing their own clothing.

The Methodist Church choir has been taken in hand by Mrs. Wakefield, aided by Miss Keese and Mr. Evans, and has now become self-supporting and independent of the fluctuating musical talent of the constantly changing mission staff.

…On April 6^th a new member of the mission staff appeared in the person of Master Charles Henry Halsey! Congratulations all round to the parents, to the mission, and to the new member!

Mr. Halsey has spent a useful winter in superintending our missionary plumbing, finishing up the cement floors, etc., of the new hospital, mending burst pipes, and doing innumerable little things, which, if perhaps not much noticed at the time, would, however, be very much noticed if left undone! He has also held a regular weekly Bible class, and has been very good in reading, etc., to the patients.

A. W. Wakefield

Jesse Halsey & Charles Henry

Some additional information is given by Dr. Little in a letter to Dr. Grenfell of the 19^th of February, 1911, the following extracts from which we have been permitted to print:

Halsey has an advanced class in night school, geometry, physics, chemistry, etc. Dr. Coker has been illustrating lectures with experiments—very interesting. Wright has from twelve to eighteen in the lower classes of night school. He is a great help in every way. Evans has full charge of the camps., keeping records, etc. Miss Storr and Mrs. Wakefield have the Bible class for women, Halsey for the men.

…We have just had a very good service in the wards, Halsey preaching. I am wondering what sort of a crowd there will be here next summer and what your plans will be. I expect you will find your hands full when you resume the reins.

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | January 1912

The First Cruise of the George B. Cluett

… However, she got away on the following Saturday morning, and arrived in St. Anthony the next week, Friday, having made the trip in just seven days. Mr. Halsey wrote of the latter part of the trip: “I would not have given ten cents for our $500 deck cargo, but the captain and men worked like Trojans and not a thing was lost!” . . .

“We had a very rough trip down to St. Anthony. The Rev. Jesse Halsey and wife and child went with us. Mrs. Halsey made a good sailor, but Mr. Halsey could not get over seasickness so he did not enjoy the trip very much. The weather was very rough at St. Anthony while we were discharging cargo, but notwithstanding the stormy passage we had coming down, the cargo came out in good condition.”

–H.C. Pickels, Schr. Geo. B. Cluett

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | January 1913

--> Our Stewardship in 1912

St. Anthony is losing this year the services of our beloved friend, chief of outside workers, and "private parson," the Rev. Jesse Halsey. His house stands empty, and we lament his absence every time we look at it. We have never had any man whose Christ-like spirit in everything he touched has more gripped the love and imagination of our men. It is only a question of finances which makes us obliged to cut down this small salary. The price of a single dinner in so many of the large houses would add a year of his invaluable work.

Wilfred T. Grenfell

Items from the New England Grenfell Association

The coming of the schooner Geo. B. Cluett for the winter supplies was anticipated by Boston friends with more interest than usual. Her passenger list was a large one for this time of the year, among the passengers being Dr. and Mrs. John Mason Little, Jr., with their infant son of three months; Mrs. Halsey and her two boys (the youngest two months of age), and two native children whose father is a reindeer herder at St. Anthony and whose mother is not living. These two children (a girl and a boy) Mr. and Mrs. Halsey are to shepherd: the girl being old enough to act as a nursery maid, and both will attend school in Southampton, N.Y., which is the home of the Halseys this year!

Helen I. Halsey on board The Geo. B. Cluett

The voyage was the longest and most tedious ever reported by any of the Mission schooners, because of the constant and continuous head winds, and occupied twenty-one days between St. Anthony and Boston: the boat arriving on October 15th at noon. By telephone message from the Chamber of Commerce an hour in advance, many of the friends of the passengers on board were able to be at the wharf and see the Cluett come in, much to the surprise and delight of all. All on board gave great praise to, and expressed appreciation of the seamanship and cheerful optimism of Captain Pickels, which helped them to keep up their courage daily. The captain made the most of every breath of wind and caught and made use of it at every opportunity—but the chart showed that on some days the schooner was blown back almost faster than she could make up on the following day, and also showed a very peculiar zigzag path.

Beside a small amount of freight, the Cluett brought from St. Anthony a young black bear in the hold. The bear was for the Zoo in the Franklin Park of Boston. It was no small amount of labour to take the bear from the schooner to the park, and although it was all done in a scientific manner, by three of the men from the Zoo, the time occupied was no less than three hours, and young bruin showed some fight before he was finally placed behind bars in the cage brought in which to transport him.

Rev. Jesse Halsey returned early in November after superintending the building of the little home for the medical officer at St. Anthony, which was begun early in the season. The house was roofed in before Mr. Halsey left, and the work in the interior will go on early in the spring. It is hoped that it will be ready for Dr. Little upon his return in the coming summer. Mr. Halsey's three years of service have increased the possibilities for greater efficiency not only in the hospital but also the school, the orphanage, and the homes for the general workers. He has been the one man able to teach the native men about the plumbing, etc., etc. He is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary with a decided turn for mechanics--indeed, he might be called the Christian plumber of the Mission, for he has put furnaces into the orphanage and hospital at St. Anthony and has constructed a reservoir from which he has brought running water into these buildings. Skillful as he is in the mechanical line, he was no less successful when acting in the capacity of Christian teacher, in the absence of Dr. Grenfell, on Sundays in the church and hospital, and in teaching winter evening school, preparing the young men coming to Pratt Institute. It was a fortunate happening for both the Mission and the man when Mr. Halsey heard Dr. Grenfell lecture as he was graduated from Union Seminary, and he at once decided to join the volunteers in the Mission.

E. E. W., Secretary

17^th December 1912

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | April 1913

Items from the New England Grenfell Association

Because Dr. Grenfell is in charge of St. Anthony Hospital this winter, deep in surgical and medical work and the running of his various institutions, while the regular doctor at St. Anthony is having a much needed vacation, the Rev. Jesse Halsey, who has served as a helper at St. Anthony of four years, has been helping at this end of the line this winter by giving lectures with and without the lantern slides. Dr. Grenfell has so many responsibilities in the North that he can do nothing about raising money this winter at such along range and under such a handicap. Mr. Halsey has proved himself a real friend to the Mission and is an earnest man with long experience at St. Anthony. He has spoken at Dartmouth and Wellesley Colleges and before a few Men’s Clubs as well as the Women’s club in Dudham, Mass. He is available still by making appointments a few weeks in advance.

***A Labrador Doctor: The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell (Boston 1919)

*Presentation copy with original mounted photographs. Inscribed and signed by Grenfell on the half-title, with a mounted photograph of "The Doctor on board the `Stratheona,'" (caption in another hand). Also, inscribed on the front pastedown, "W. G. Brown, Christmas 1919, Best wishes, Jesse Halsey." 

Halsey was an associate of Grenfell's at the Deep Sea Mission, and inserted before the frontispiece of the book is a 4-page illustrated program for "Illustrated Lectures by Rev. Jesse Halsey" at The Players in Boston. 

Other original photographs mounted on the front endpaper and flyleaves, all captioned, include "Dr. Grenfell greeted by the school children in St. Anthony"; "Jesse Halsey, Labrador & Northern Newfoundland, 1909 to Nov. 1912." 

"The `Boss' and the `Gang' (Boxes of food & clothing from the `States' being unloaded by U.S. college students)"; "J.H. in Labrador `dickey,"; and "Tuckamore Croft - Charles Henry & Helen I. Halsey" (a woman with dog sled in front of house). 

Grenfell (1865-1940) was a noted English physician who had been the house surgeon at London Hospital and then in 1892 became a medical missionary and resident of Labrador, where he also founded hospitals and orphanages.