Cincinnatians Visit Miami | 28 September 1934 | Cincinnati Enquirer

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 . . .

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

Frederick A. Isham | Obituary

5 March 1937 | Lake Placid News

Marion Stackpole Barbour |1904-1950

26 December 1950

Operation “Westward-Ho” 1960

December 1960

Last July we flew Jet back to Southampton, Long Island, where we spent the summer at Helen’s home on Main Street, sorting and packing household treasures for shipment to California.

This operation also involved finding a buyer for “Saltaire,” which had been the summer home for Ralph and his former wife, Jessie, for many years. The new occupants are Mr. and Mrs. Philip Sabatelli and their two children from Whitestone, New York—and we wish them continued health and happiness! Many of you have visited us here in years past so you can understand how hard it was to part from such pleasant memories.

Before going East we had the good fortune of finding a place in Riverside at 4652 Granada that we could really call home and now that we have lived in it since the first part of October we find it most charming.

There always has to be a “fly in the ointment,” and our trip West was no exception. While driving on “66” against the setting sun in Ft. Morgan, Colorado, Ralph overshot an intersection which threw us in the hospital for two days. Fortunately, however, no one was seriously hurt. Only Helen suffered lacerations and bruises, which by now are pretty well cleared up.

“Westward-Ho” is now a closed chapter in our lives and we cordially invite you to visit us whenever you are in our vicinity.

A Happy Christmas and a New Year full of God’s blessings to you all is our sincere wish for you.

Cordially,
Ralph & Helen Quass

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

"Southampton public school has distinction of having two Labrador children on its roll."

 

The children were brought here by Mrs. Jesse Halsey, wife of a minister at Dr. Grenfell's station at St. Anthony's, Newfoundland. The Rev. Mr. Halsey is a native of Southampton and has been located in Labrador for a number of years and tkaes a great interest in the education of the children at the Far North Mission. He will soon join his wife here, having been granted a leave of absence. 

4 Nov. 1912 | Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The two children, who are being education in the Southampton school through the generosity of Mr. Halsey, are Alfred, aged 11 years, and Alice, aged 15, children of Edward Evans, a reindeer herder employed by Dr. Grenfell. As they were under 16 years of age and not accompanied by their parents, they wre temporarily held by the immigration inspectors in Boston, where they arrived October 15 on the auxilary schooner George B. Cluett. The vessel was twenty-four days on the passing from St. Anthony's, and during the most of the time was best with furious gales and heavy seas.

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

Archibald Ash of Red Bay, N.F. and John Newell of St. Anthony's were also passengers who made the trip to Boston. This is Mr. Ash's second visit to the United State. He has attended Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and will re-enter that school to take a course in electrical engineering. His previous study was in mechanical engineering. On his return to Labrador he was given the work of making plans for a public building and he prepared the same in a faultless manner. Mr. Newell will study carpentry. When they have completed their studies, they will return North to engage in teaching. 

Jesse Halsey & Helen Isham Engaged

 20 Jan 1910 | Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Edward Molitore to Jesse halsey

1 June 1942

"Eli and Samuel"

"Eli and Samuel" by Cleveland Woodward | 1930

Sunday, November 30, 1930
Cincinnati Enquirer 

"A few days ago we learned that a large mural painting picturing the dramatic story of 'Eli and Samuel' had been placed in the auditorium of the Parish House of the Seventh Presbyterian Church on Walnut Hills in memory of Wilmun Halsey, the young son of Rev. and Mrs. Halsey, whose tragic death occurred on May 20, 1928. The mural was presented to the church by Rev. Halsey and his family.

"It is a most appropriate symbol of the life and taste of the child, who ever loved the story of Samuel. The mural is the work of Cleveland Woodward, a Cincinnati artist, whose gifts for pictorial organization are well known. The work takes the narrative form, and the subject is one that many be admired as well as understood. Mr. Woodward selects the moment in Samuel's life when he hears the voice of the Lord and he comes to Eli in the temple. Both figures stand out in a great light against the dark light of a temple interior. The whole enshrines a beautiful associated thought, simple in idea and particularly appropriate as a memorial to a child whose heart was filled with aspirations and ideals. Such a little boy was Wilmun Halsey. He was much beloved by his schoolmates and teachers. At the Lotspeich School, where he attended, because he sought responsibility he was appointed bell ringer for the classes and every morning bright and early he was at his post, his eager little face showing the pride he took in his official position, and in the mural the face of Samuel was taken from a crayon portrait of little Wilmun which was done by Frederick Weber."

"Eli and Samuel" by Cleveland Woodward | 1949

"The gradual scattering of the family has some grief in it . . ."

Rev. Charles E. Craven, D.D.

355 North Fullerton Avenue

Upper Montclair, N.J.

26 March 1933

 

My dear friend, Jesse Halsey:

For March 26^th I find the note: “Jesse Halsey, m. 1910.” So I am sending you and Mrs. Halsey my congratulations—and Mrs. Craven’s also. After more than 47 years of it we are so well persuaded that marriage is good that we like to send congratulations to younger voyagers on the matrimonial sea and tell them that it gets better as the years go on. We find marriage as comfortable as an old shoe—a wonderful old shoe which grows easier, but like the shoes of the children of Israel in the wilderness never wears out.

We wish you and Mrs. Halsey a happy new year together, with God’s blessing upon your work, your family, and your church. I suppose the days are here or soon coming when your children will be away from home at school or college. The gradual scattering of the family has some grief in it, but it comes gradually, and brings compensations of many sorts. These men and women that are our children and now have children of their own in different places certainly bring many new and varied interests into our lives.

The care of a large church in these days must fill your hand and heart with many cares and responsibilities, and I can imagine that active ministry was never more interesting, engrossing, and useful than now. May you have health and strength for it, and rich satisfaction in it.

Faithfully yours,

Charles E. Craven

Abigail Fithian Halsey Talk at Museum of the City of New York

1938

Mission Schooner Arrives | Boston Evening Transcript

October 15, 1912

The Messenger | 1940

Anne Grenfell | 1910

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

Jessie Luther | St. Anthony, May 10th, 1910

Our comfortable sense of isolation is over. An uneasy anticipation of impending change is in the air. The general upheaval will begin with the arrival of the Prospero, which is expected to bring a part of the summer contingent. We hear rumors of hordes: collegians, volunteers, nurses, medical students. There will also be an exodus. Mr. Evans will leave us and is already inspecting locks on his trunk and suitcase. His feeling savors of emancipation. Mrs. Grenfell plans to go home for a visit and return in late June with visitors for the summer. Miss Kennedy, after long and devoted service, is going home for a much-needed vacation. Mrs. Manager departs with her baby in June, and Mr. Manager will travel from place to place on the schooners to oversee business affairs at little settlements connected with the Mission. The Doctor will stay here but plans to go north on the Strathcona after Dr. Little returns in June with one of his sisters.

An interesting arrival will be Mr. Jesse Halsey, a Presbyterian minister who after an intensive course in plumbing and kindred practical crafts is to serve the Mission by superintending drainage installation. He will arrive with his bride in June to stay for a year, probably located at the Guest House. Also in June, Dr. Wakefield will reappear with his bride, and still another reappearance will be Dr. Grenfell’s cousin, Mr. Spencer, who is returning to direct agricultural development and enlist enthusiastic co-operation from the students if anyone can. He has the personality to bring results. The semi-annual kaleidoscopic shift of personnel is beginning. It will be interesting to see how the pieces fall into place and what the ultimate picture will be.”

from Jessie Luther at the Grenfell Mission, an annotated edition of a travel journal that Luther wrote from 1906 to 1910, edited by Ronald Rompkey (2001)