Dorothy Kidd, age 11, 37th Auto Victim

20 May 1927 | Circleville Herald | Cincinnati—Dorothy Kidd, 11, daughter of Robert B. Kidd, comptroller for the Proctor and Gamble & Proctor Co., was the 37^th auto victim of Hamilton county this year.

Privilege means obligation to any honest soul."

One's Debts Should be Admitted

Minister Asserts in Sermon on Thanksgiving | Little Payments Now and Then Show Man is Honest, Rev. Jesse Halsey Says

Acknowledgement of debt to the past formed the basis of Dr. Jesse Halsey’s Thanksgiving sermon at the Seventh Presbyterian Church yesterday morning.

Describing the sacrifices with which modern privileges have been bought and comparing life in the United States with life as he saw it in Russia during the Bolshevik uprising, he said:

‘With this in mind—our comforts and their destitution—with this in mind, I ask you and myself—‘Am I a Bolshevik? Will I destroy the wells of the past, or seek to maintain and to build better?’

Using the text, “Wells digged which thou diggest not,” Dr. Halsey said:

“Ancient civilizations developed along the water courses. The Pilgrims chose Plymouth because of its brook. Isaac and Abraham and Jacob built wells. Water is indispensable.”

“We daily use the wells of the fathers. They wrought: we enjoy. Lightly we accept the blessings of home and country, forgetting the awful cost.

Examples Are Given

“Think, then, of some ‘well diggers’ in whose debt you have come within the last few hours. A telegram here is the result of Morse’s experimentation and privation. He had the greatest difficulty in persuading Congress to appropriate money to build the first line of telegraphic communication. Today we use his well, forgetting his labor.

“The shade of Alexander Graham Bell stands by every time you use the telephone. Into your breakfast room this morning came Cyrus McCormick when you made the toast. He with a thousand others who have perfected agricultural machinery and technique are your creditors. Your radio suggests Henry’s experiments, Pupin, Marconi, a thousand more. All this at your disposal for a few dollars—so simplified that a boy of 10 can make a receiving set.

“A railway journey—James Watt is there to see you off. His bubbling teakettle was 12 years becoming a steam engine and then only by starvation and deprivation. Ten thousand men on guard at switch and throttle and keyboard, making your journey safe. Pioneers, blazing trails, fighting savages made your journey possible. The Fair of the Iron Horse staged by the Baltimore and Ohio last month was a marvelous moving picture of the development of transportation. It only emphasizes our debt to the past—to inventors and engineers and investors. Your automobile—the tires alone speak of Goodyear and 12 starving years of experimentation and delayed success. Turn where you will, you only multiply your feeling of obligation.

Newspaper Given as Example

This morning’s paper—10 cents? Back of it, Cadmus, the Phoenician, or whoever it was that invented letters; Gutenberg and moveable types; Hoe and his presses. News gathers at the ends of the earth; syndicated material from the wits and poets and philosophers of every land. All for 10 cents—plus toil and blood and tears. For in Russia, for example, you couldn’t have your newspaper, uncensored. Free speech lies written here between the lines. Runnymede and Magna Carta, a thousand places, ten thousand martyrs—all yours in a newspaper for 10 cents, or two.

“Political rights are yours. Why? Because of Independence Hall and Bunker Hill, and Valley Forge. Track their feet across the blood-stained snow that bitter winter 150 years ago, and then cast your ballot as you handle a sacred thing. A woman in a certain precinct refused a ballot the other day because it was soiled. The clean one she received in its place was marked with blood, the blood of heroes and patriots. Every ballot cast in America is like that, it represents sacrifice. How lightly we use it.

“Your doctor is the most wanted and most needed member of society—at times. He comes armed to fight dread disease, equipped to give you the best science has to give. With the hospital equipment at his disposal he gives you the best that human skill can offer. What did it cost? Well, very much more than your contribution to Christ Hospital or some other. You may have given a large sum, but you’re still in debt! Listen to a bit of the story. Harvey was hounded when he told of his discovery of the circulation of the blood. Lord Lister was laughed at for a decade while he developed antiseptic and aseptic surgery. Sixty years ago Pasteur and Koch were derided while, with painstaking skill and superhuman thoroughness, they perfected the germ theory of disease and produced anti-toxins. On the basis of averages it would be a simple thing to say how many of us are here today because of the introduction of diphtheria anti-toxin alone.

“Think of Martyrs”

“And religion—wells Thou digest not.” Think of the martyrs of religious persecution, the fires of Smithfield, John Bunyan a dozen years in jail for conscience sake. Think of the makers of the first American Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim Fathers—and Mothers. Driven from home, to Holland, a leaky boat on the squally autumnal Atlantic, rockbound shore, deadly pestilence, bleak winter—all for conscience sake. Thanksgiving came out of that. Down on your knees, people, before the altars of your God, grateful for the wells of life given us by our forefathers

I speak to you with the lurid background of revolution in my mind. Ten years ago I was in Russia. All that interminable winter we saw destruction rampant. Wells destroyed, the best fruits of civilization wasted. And with this in mind—our comforts and their destitution—with this in mind I ask you and myself—‘Am I a Bolshevik?’ Will I destroy the wells of the past or seek to maintain and to build better?

“Privilege means obligation to any honest soul. There are many slackers. Taking all the past offers and saying no thanks in word or deed.

“Welldiggers are still needed. There are arid areas in business. Last night I received a booklet—“What the Central Trust Company Can Do for You.” This bank, or any other, is a Temple of Faith; it can promise and guarantee certain things because of the same costly well-digging process that has been going on through the centuries. Business must extend the areas of service and goodwill if ever it lives up to the obligations imposed by the past.

“Next time you open your Bible (today I hope) think of John Wycliffe and of William Tyndale, burned at the stake that you might read in your own tongue the wonderful works of God. Next time some civic duty presents itself remember Saratoga and Lexington. And before the campaign closes tomorrow night send something to Christ Hospital*—you can’t pay your debt in full; make a payment on your account. For you are a debtor to science, you’ve been drinking at a well you never digged.

“In Labrador, where I once lived, when a fisherman gets in debt to a trade, no matter how large the debt, if every year he makes a payment on the debt, even small payment, he is considered an honest man. This is called ‘acknowledging the debt.’ I’d like to acknowledge my debt to the past, today at this Thanksgiving season; I can’t pay it in full, even if I were rich as Croesus, but I can and do acknowledge the debt and with grateful heart will seek to pay a little.”

*(Helen Augusta—b. Feb. 8, 1914 at Bethesda Hospital, Cin.; Wilmun Haynes, b. Sept. 30, 1920, at Christ Hospital, Cin.) 

With thanks to: The Jesse Halsey Manuscript Collection. Special Collections, Princeton Theological Seminary Library.
 

Eva Palmer-Sikelianos

With thanks to: The Jesse Halsey Manuscript Collection. Special Collections, Princeton Theological Seminary Library.

"This is where life was lived nobly and sweetly and well;"

Greetings from The Halsey Family | August 1927

Aero-view of Southampton 1927

Reverend Josephus

Jesse Halsey |c1927

 

Reverend Josephus has a big house—and a big family; a big church building and a big congregation; a large parish house with many rooms, but also with many activities.

He has a room designated a study, but it is a perpetual motion office. Parties, dances, classes, conferences, meetings for prayer, for praise, for study, and whatnot. Committees and boards and agencies, meetings morning afternoon and night are held in Reverend Josephus’ church and parish hall. He is seldom alone or unattended. His telephone is like a junebug on the first hot night of late spring.

And his house; in the attic he took an unused room, stacked the boxes, whitewashed the walls, and improvised a desk, for two mornings it was his, unmolested. Then his little girl needed a playhouse—she got it.

One boy went away to school. Rev. Josephus appropriated his room, forgot the trinkets on the wall, covered up the stuffed snakes that gave him the jitters, and began to write. Mother needed a sewing room “where there was sunshine.” She got it.

A study was provided in the parsonage. It had an inside and outside door; it was a convenient pass to the side yard, as such it was successful; but as a study it was not a success—the adjoining garden was the children’s playground.

Then the radio for some reason seemed to fit this study best and night and day if any of the family were home it wailed away.

Reverend hated the radio—except for a few minutes a week—but the family were addicts: Tiny Tim to Fire Chief and School Boy Pete; the Cook to Tink and Wink; Jimmie to ____; and mother to Danroch (Rev always tried to finish his sermon on Friday morning, and Saturday afternoon) and the opera.

In the evening, he hit upon the kitchen; it was warm; the big table could accommodate his books. For a while it worked, but Helen came home from boarding school and fudge and cookies were concocted by night and after she went back Mirandy, the cook, got a beaux and the Rev moved out.

Sermon quality began to deteriorate; people spoke of it. All parish activities boomed, but sermons were thin.

The pastor put a sign on his (church) study door: “Occupied”; but the phone didn’t heed and the beggars who stopped in could read, and the President of the Board, or the Ladies Aid, didn’t. So he burned it up.

One day at the trade show he heard shop management. It worked. The boys carried on their studies in the noise.

Shop Management

Jesse Halsey | 1927

My friend Johnston—he’s a minister—went to the Automotive Trade school to speak on Lincoln’s Birthday. After the assembly, the principal was showing him around. They came into a machine shop with the crack of two decrepit engines being timed, a planer was scraping in one corner and a lathe groaning in another; every half second there was the explosion of the main engine that drove the main shaft over head; there were revolving pulleys and flying belts everywhere—confusion worse confounded, thought my studious friend.

At one side of this busy shop room was a long table and at the table fifteen boys were absorbed in their books—more than less.

“How in the world can they study?” asked the preacher. “It would drive me crazy to read in here.”

When they reached the quiet of his office, the principal explained.

“That’s what we call ‘shop management.’ These boys are going to work in the noise of machine shops and garages, such thinking and planning as they do will be done in confusion and noise. We are training them for their work and purposely have the classes, most of them, right in the shops.”

The preacher went home thinking about it.

His study had become an office. Telephone calls by the score came in each day. Some could be shunted to his helpers, but the bell rang just the same. No sooner was he immersed in reading of the composition of some sermon, than in came a caller on some errand or other.

GRANDFATHER TRAILS | c1927

By Jesse Halsey

My great great grandfather, for whom I am named, was a Revolutionary soldier and officer. When he heard of the Battle of Lexington he and his brother took the king bolt out of the one horse farm wagon, rigged a seat on the two front wheels, and drove an old horse ten miles from his home to Sag Harbor. Here, with other men, they rowed in a whale boat across Long Island Sound to New London, walked to Boston, arriving in time for the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Off and on for the eight years of the war, he was with the army, once at least on Washington’s staff. My grandfather, who heard his grandfather repeat the wartime stories in turn told them to my father and to his own grandchildren, who have rehearsed them to me time and again. My children have heard them from me (ad nauseam, they used to think). But we have had the advantage of the other generations of being able, with our automobile, to visit most of the scenes of grandfather’s activity during the Revolution.

Two miles from where he was born was where we were so fortunate as to spend the summer down on the Atlantic seaboard. The home site is now a cornfield. When I was a boy some of the foundation of the old house and the apple trees were standing. Not a mile away in the village cemetery rest his mortal remains. Some years ago the government furnished an appropriate tombstone and seventy of his descendents placed a similar marble slab at his wife’s grave.

My family, there are seven of us, has trekked to many Revolutionary sites, with an especial interest to those connected with grandfather. We have stood on Bunker Hill, crossed the river and climbed the belfry tower of the old North church, visited the public square in Cambridge, where Washington took command (grandfather was present). We have crossed Long Island Sound more than once, but not in a whale boat. Opposite New London stands Groton monument where grandfather’s brother, Captain Henry, was killed when Benedict Arnold, the traitor, burned the town. That hot June day in 1779, when Washington attached Clinton’s retreating army, grandfather was captain on the general staff. He heard Washington, with an oath, order Charles Lee, another traitor, off the field. He was wounded in the engagement and likely taken to the old Tennant church, which was used as a hospital. One wonders if he drank from Molly Pitcher’s well. He carried the effects of his wound to his death and in his old age used a crutch.

He had, so the story goes, an ardent Tory for a neighbor. In a violent discussion that developed one day, the neighbor maintained that never in America could woolen goods be made the equal of the British products. Grandfather maintained that the American output was equal to the British. A violent altercation developed and the Tory called the patriot a liar, and the patriot, with his crutch, knocked the Tory down and sat astride him until noon, when his son came home from the field and encouraged his father to desist (decamp). He lived to a good old age. He outlived his children, but, fortunately, not his grandchildren, and his grandson, who was my grandfather, told these tales to his grandchildren.

The old days of horse and buggy, of sandy roads and crooked lanes, are gone in many parts of the country. Cars fly through with some terminus in view likely, but their occupants seeing little along the way. The highways are numbered and in most places conspicuously marked and only when a detour sign confronts one in the middle of the road and cannot be disregarded does one take a back road.

Yet, on those less frequented ways are some of the most interesting and beautiful spots that are to be found. They escape the eye of the average tourist. I, for one, miss the Blue Book of a decade ago that gave back roads, the names of lakes and brooks and best of all the historic footnotes that made the journey interesting.

En route to French Lick for the cure, you pass Salem, Indiana. Not one in a thousand knows that here John Hay was born. Oh for an intelligent, informed, and historically minded cartographer! Seeing the Green Mountains and enjoying is in no way hindered as one passes through Brandon to find there a monument to Stephen A Douglas who was born there in the village. Or to turn aside at Bennington and climb the hill to the old town and pay one’s respect to the spirits of the “boys who there resisted Bourgoin’s advance” memorialized in the shaft that rises on the hill. In the same old village one is interested to find that William Lloyd Garrison edited his first abolition sheet. It is off the main highway a little that one finds the Saratoga battle monument near Schuylerville, or the monument to Benedict Arnold’s boot and wounded leg. One must leave the express highway by two miles to sight the Princeton battlefield and house where General Mercer died. A circuit of the Wilderness battlefield is made by using several less frequented back roads. To find Monticello, one leaves the main highway by four miles and lives for a brief hour with Jefferson in the country. That section of the main concreted highway down east where I grew up occasionally affords a glimpse of the ocean and the dunes. To those who know the back roads, pond and bay and sandy strips open in quick succession and the booming surf is ever in one’s ears. But the red lines on the map give no hint of such access.

On the back roads through the Adirondacks one finds the sleeping place of John Brown’s body. Off the trunkline near Kinderhook is hidden the grave of Martin Van Buren and a mile or so away, his old home Lindenwall. Nearby is the site of Ichabod Crane’s schoolhouse and the home of Katrina Van Tassel. One would never guess it as he flies through on Highway No. 9.

from "Job’s Lane, Southampton, 1663-1927: Part C"

by Lizbeth Halsey White | March 24, 1927

As this is history and we must be impartial, let us know cross the square to the opposite corner on Pond Lane. Here for many years stood the little old shop where drinks were sold by one known as “Old John Ware,” which name may not have been so much indicative of his age as that much popular opinion was against the business in which he was engaged.

Though he sold whiskey and gin to their fathers he also sold candy to the children and fire-crackers too on the Fourth of July. He was patriotic for he erected a flagpole across the street on the hill in front of what is now the Legion property. A little old cannon was there also where the boys celebrated on patriotic occasions. One Fourth of July morning, we are told, John Ware poured into the cannon such a charge of powder that it below itself to pieces and so great was the concussion that windows in the shop were broken. One stormy night when the snow lay deep on the square the little old shop went up in smoke.

from Southampton Magazine c 1913

In the old North-end Cemetery, well down to the west end, there is a double stone engraved with the names of Benjamin and George Ware who gave their lives for the Union. These were twin sons of “Old John Ware.”

His successor was “John Hen” who had a real saloon on the corner facing Job’s Lane, and whose jovial dispositions helped the business to flourish. He called his corner “Hell’s Half-Acre” and the sign over the door read in acrostic “John Hen’s Place.”

In 1870 or 1872, the Howell Brothers built their grocery store and Job’s Lane began its career as a business centre. The Post Office was also here when there came a break in the Republican administration long enough for a Democratic Postmaster to be appointed. Mr. George R. Howell filled the position as Postmaster most acceptably.

In 1876, the centennial of our country’s birth, the erection of a Liberty Pole by the Village was deemed a very appropriate and desirable way in which to remember the event.

The year before (1875) there had been wrecked off Shinnecock Point a vessel loaded with salt. Her name was the Annie C. Cook and her timbers lay on the beach for she was a total wreck.

Through the enterprise of some public spirited citizens among whom were Edgar Greene, Charles Bennett, Moses Phillips, Phyrrhus Concer, and Capt. Charles Goodale, one of the masts of the Annie C. Cook was brought from the beach and set up on the common at the foot of Job’s Lane, now known as Monument Square. Mr. Sylvanus Bennett contributed the topmast and his son Charlie made the cross trees.

The pole blew over once in a storm and was reset in concrete and the vessel’s spar stands today, proclaiming old Glory to the breeze as staunch and firm as when placed there fifty years ago.

Text courtesy Lizbeth Halsey White Files, Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center | Historic images courtesy Southampton Library

"Southampton Honors Lizbeth White"

Lizbeth May Halsey White & Edward Pearson White 
c1929 | 34 Post Crossing

from "Southampton Honors Lizbeth White"

By Portia Flanagan

Long Island Traveler-Watchman

23 May 1985

SOUTHAMPTON—The Contents of the Southampton Historical Museum were designated officially as the Lizbeth White Memorial by members of the Southampton Colonial Society at their annual meeting held in the museum’s spacious drawing room Friday night, May 17.

The members’ unanimous action was taken to honor the late Mrs. White who, as Town Historian in the 1920s, uncovered numbers of long-hidden treasures and urged the community to preserve its rich heritage for future generations.

Society Trustee Roy L. Wines Jr. told the 100 persons present that it was “a privilege to offer the motion” to designate the museum’s contents in Mrs. White’s memory. His motion also provided for the creation of “an appropriate bronze plague” to be mounted in the museum building, known as The Captain Rogers Homestead, at Meeting House Lane.

Preceding the establishment of the memorial, Society president Robert Keene, who is the current town historian, described Mrs. White as “one of my heroines.” It was in his own search of town records that revealed her accomplishments and foresight, along with her remarkable grasp and concept of local history, that endeared her to me, three Town Historians and some 50 years later,” Mr. Keen said.

Reading from a prepared statement, Mr. Keene said that in 1915, when Southampton celebrated its 275^th anniversary, the local paper, the Sea-Side Times, published a piece written by Mrs. White that he said, “proved to me that she had the understanding and inspiration that, over 35 years later, resulted in the founding of the Southampton Historical Museum.

In it Mrs. White noted that  “Many of our town’s most precious memorials have vanished forever. Our fathers were too busy planting and colonizing, to think much about leaving behind them personal souvenirs . . . The golden opportunities for constructing the infant history of our colony have for the most part passed away. Those which remain ought to be seized with the greatest avidity.”

She would like to see, she wrote 70 years ago, “The fairest lot of land to be found between Long Springs and the beach devoted to a memorial use. Spare an acre or two from your generous farms, upon it to be erected a modest but dignified structure of stone, or brick, fireproof, which shall contain primarily a library. Then into this repository let every native and every citizen take a pride in gathering whatever shall preserve the memory of the past or throw light upon its life. The place and time to begin are here and now.

“Begin with today and work backward as fast and as far as possible,” she wrote, continuing: “Gradually the past will be restored, the lost will be found. Long hidden treasures will leap from their hiding places and find their companions and congenial associations.”

She noted in the article that the Colonial Society, established in 1898, had sponsored two loan exhibitions of “a rare and beautiful collection of articles and relics of earlier days  . . . These exhibitions have proved our locality rich in treasures of the past and the Society has long looked forward to making permanent an exhibit of the kind of thing which historical societies everywhere are doing, with a background of incidents far less picturesque than that Southampton possesses.”

It was not until 1951, however, 19 years after Mrs. White’s death in October, 1932, that the Colonial Society was able to open the doors of the Historical Museum, its first permanent home, which Mr. Keene said on Friday is “this truly magnificent museum complex which has become a fitting memorial for all that Lizbeth White ever dreamed of. And furthermore, he said, “it is a tribute to Lizbeth White, the first woman historian of the Town and the meticulous recorder of our history and heritage.”

It was Mrs. White, Mr. Keene said, who was instrumental in bringing to the attention of the Town Board in 1928 the design of the town flag; it was her “small typewritten note” that he found among the papers of the late Town Historian William K. Dunwell that led to the adoption of the first Southampton Town Flag in 1982, Mr. Keene added.

And it was Mrs. White, he said, who discovered that the first woman to step ashore at what is now Conscience Point in North Sea in 1640 was Eleanor Howell, the wife of the leader of the first white settlers, Edward Howell. It was she who identified the small boy in the boat as the Howell’s eight-year-old son, Arthur, he said.

Mrs. White, who was born Lizbeth Halsey, live din what is today the Post House at North Main Street, and raised her family there. She was the founding Regent of the Southampton Colony Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and it was, appropriately, the chapter that presented the flag to the town.