"These are days of judgment--and we regard them not."

12 February 1940 | Cincinnati Enquirer

"America is on the Jericho Road . . . You will defend the right, you will fight for justice at the expense of your own ease and pleasure." --Rev. Jesse Halsey

Southampton | 1640-1940

49 No. Main 1833-1940

Abigail Fithian Halsey | Christmas 1940

Frederick Isham Halsey | Obituary

The East Hampton Star., January 11, 1940

"we are prepared as Rotarians to takeour part in municipal service"

Jesse Halsey | draft | c1940

The Jesse Halsey Manuscript Collection. Special Collections, Princeton Theological Seminary Library.

Seventh Presbyterian Church | Cincinnati

c1940

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

The Messenger | 1940

from "Among the Deep Sea Fishers" | July 1940

 

Sir Grenfell, Charles, Jr., Rev. Jesse Halsey

Alumni News

The REV. JESSE HALSEY was host to Sir Wilfred during the latter's visit to Cincinnati in April. Though he did not accept the position, Dr. Halsey was recently offered a Professorship of Practical Theology at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, in Chicago.

"The sea tugged at his heart--"

(Gentlemen—I didn’t mean to preach. This was written primarily for my children. I have hoped they would catch some of my enthusiasm that Grenfell gave to me.)

The last time we talked (in Spring of 1940), we both wished that we were young enough to go to the English Channel now. Twenty years ago we went as did our ancestors three hundred years before us. We also reluctantly admitted that our boys are not so eager to go as were we, or their ancestors twelve generations ago. They do not see the treat—to Dover sands and all else besides that we covet dear. We (old fellows) wondered if the stock is running out.

For thirty years he was my hero—and still is. He spoke of life and treated it as “An Adventure.” He could steer his ship by the stars or the sun or by dead reckoning. He used to say that a poor chart was worse than none at all. Many poor charts he revised, and many a storm he has outridden (these things are a parable). He wrecked some boats and bumped the bottom of others, but he built a ship railway to repair his own and those of all others.

The sea tugged at his heart—He’s off on another voyage. That’s what he believed. And I believe it too; he taught me. The first books he ever gave me were on immortality. He used to talk about it—quite naturally, just as he talked of other things. I listened, but I wasn’t entirely interested. But now . . . well, one gets older . . . things gain perspective . . .

Eulogy: Sir Wilfred Grenfell

 

By Jesse Halsey

I have told you something about the Shore, something about the people, and a little about the Mission, now I want to put the emphasis where it belongs—on The Man. He it was who made the Mission, helped the people, and put the shore ‘on the map’—our Chief, THE Doctor, Sir Wilfred!

He was a tall, well set up man with a body always under an athlete’s discipline. He would go over the steamer’s rail of a summer morning as we cruised the shore, swim a few minutes ice floating around, a dozen icebergs in site, and climb back. All the boys who sailed with him were supposed to follow. It was fearful, but he enjoyed it. (I think it had something to do with his heart trouble—he said not.)

He had a furrowed face, suntanned, sea battered and open, topped by graying hair worn pompadour. This accentuated his already high forehead; sea blue eyes, clear and steady, set in deep sockets with heavy eyebrows, a good sized nose, a mouth always on the verge of a smile with a well-trimmed but fair-sized grizzled mustache; a sinewy neck well set on square shoulders. My description won’t help you much to visualize; never mind, what he did tells more about him, and the way he did it tells even more of the manner of man he was.

The son of an English Rectory (Charles Kingsley was his uncle), a low churchman, he had small use for doctrinaire religion; he despised narrowness, and convention. He never smoked—except during Lent. I remember one Good Friday he was at our house (in St. Anthony). Parson Gardiner was staying with us—he was the Church of England archdeacon who came once a year. Gardiner was utterly miserable, nervous as a cat, because he couldn’t smoke (Good Friday—that would soon be over). Grenfell was almost as bad wishing for Easter, too—that he might quit his self-imposed penance!

While young Grenfell, having finished Oxford, was interning in a London hospital under Sir Frederick Treves, he was converted in a Moody meeting. He loved to tell the story, there was no piousity about it—just real experience. I once heard him tell it to a thousand teachers; they paid him a thousand dollars and seemed well satisfied. I might repeat it here as I wrote it for an Eastern paper at the time of his death.

I have been converted, I hope you have.” I heard him say it to two thousand teachers at one time (and he was paid a thousand dollars to say it—and what followed.) He said it naturally and simply, meaning just what he said. His life came to focus at a certain time, and he was always trying to lead others to make decisions—the decision: to follow Christ.

That was Grenfell, in essence.

It started in a Moody meeting, his “Adventure,” as he called it. While a medical student, he went to that meeting, not to hear Moody, but to see a celebrated cricket player who was there. Mr. Moody side-tracked a long-winded prayer by saying to Mr. Sankey, “Let’s sing while the brother concludes his prayer.” Grenfell and his friends who were about to leave were arrested by that remark and remained—to pray.

He was converted, not from an evil life to one of righteousness, but, as he said, “from one of dallying to one of direction.” I found my compass that night.”

Internship over, Grenfell went out to the fishing fleet in the North Sea as a medical missionary. (Those sturdy fellows that are this minute hauling their catches from under the very noses of German submarines.)

Then, seeking the most needy place in the British Empire, he went to Labrador and worked as a doctor from the deck of a schooner. The next year, he built a tiny dispensary on the northern tip of Newfoundland. In summer, by boat, some sail, some steam, some diesel—a long succession of them laying their weary bones on the rocks; in winter (long and cold—Admiral Peary told me the meanest he knew), by dog team and sledge (komaticks, they say “down there”), in season, out of season, going, going, going—a modern St. Luke.

Dr. Grenfell had a good technical skill in his profession—an indispensable sine qua non to a doctor, but that equipment would have been relatively useless without that focusing decision, “conversion.” Which was more important, the education or the decision? Both were indispensable for his job. That was the thesis of his lecture—and of his life.

Tuberculosis was rampant on The Shore. Prophylaxis was just becoming a great word in medicine in those days. To cure was his mission as a doctor—and to prevent disease. Food, more of it in quantity and variety, was needed to fight the ravages of tuberculosis. Food was frightfully expensive, the people always in debt and the prices dictated by a strong combine of traders in the capital city.

So we see the missionary entering a trade war in order to fight, not traders, but disease. His Christ-impulse set him forward, his technical skill demanding. He spent his private fortune in his co-operatives, but he broke the truck system on the Shore and brought down the price of flour and made other things possible besides break and tea, and tea and bread, for fishermen’s tables.

Liquor debauched the sailors. In a long hard fight, in which the missionary became magistrate, he at last made The Shore as dry as an empty jug.

There have been industrial missions in many places, and preaching missions, and medical missions, and other kinds of missions, but Grenfell’s Labrador Mission combined them all, as probably no other single mission has ever done. And all this to “help people to help themselves.” “What would Christ do with this situation if He were here?” That was his criterion.

He had fights on his hands. Christ was a good fighter, so Grenfell thought. Fights with politicians and merchants. The people themselves often opposed him (as in the reindeer experiment, and that they might supplant the husky dog which made other livestock impossible.)

Once, I listed forty odd activities that the Chief had initiated. Some come back to me now: the hospitals (of course), orphanages, loom-rooms, lumber mill, sash and door factory, pottery, ship railway, “co-op stores, schools, agriculture (in a country where every month, save a possible August, has frosts), tanning of seal skin, and so forth, many times over. All these and many others—some successful, some abortive—all devised by a Christian missionary as his honest endeavor to follow Christ to Labrador!

Sir Wilfred (my ancestors fought under one of his ancestors in the Straits of Dover against the Armada, some twelve generations ago), was a brave knight, slaying the dragons of disease, and poverty, and ignorance where he met them. He was a humble follower of The Way, a faithful disciple and at times a flaming apostle. He loved adventure and would risk almost anything. Life to him was itself an adventure—an Adventure with Christ. As I have heard him say to crowds at Harvard and to individuals (student and fisherman alike) on the deck of his little vessel. He believed it and lived it. He has now gone on to another Adventure—with Christ.

-- from an article in Presbyterian Life | October 1940, reprinted in Among the Deep Sea Fishers, 1941

Sir Grenfell in Cincinnati | April 1940

Sir Wilfred Grenfell, Charles Jr., and Reverend Jesse Halsey with Grenfell's dog Jack | Cincinnati | April 1940

Tercentenary Pageant of Southampton Town

Alma E. Bishop, knocking on door; Abbie Halsey, seated on left

The Book of the Tercentenary Pageant of Southampton Town

“Founded For Freedom”

August 14-15, 1940

By Abigail Fithian Halsey

Episode One

The XVIIth Century

Scene 1

The Founding

The Commentator:

Behold an Indian village at the head of North Sea Harbor. The wigwam of Nowedanah, chief of the Shinnecocks, is in the foreground. In front of it the young women of the tribe are engaged in a corn planting ceremony while the elder ones go about their daily tasks. Soon the warriors return from the hunt. They lay their spoils before the fires and commence a dance of Happy Hunting.

During the dance we perceive a sloop coming up the harbor. A brave runs in bringing the news and hard on his arrival we see a band of English Puritans land Conscience Point. The first woman on shore exclaims, “For conscience sake we’re on dry and once more.”

The Puritans approach the Indians. They signify their desire for land. Some men of the party come forward with a chest containing sixteen coats. At the sight of the splendor the Indians agree to sell.

They draw up an agreement. “We do absolutely and forever grant to the parties above the mentioned, to them and their heirs and successors forever, all lands, woods and waters from the place where the Indians hayle their canoes out of the north Bay to the south side of the Island, from thence to possess all lands lying eastwood, to have an to hold forever.”

But the Indians also demand corn to be paid after the second harvest and the Puritans promise to give the Indians protection from their enemies.

They then smoke the pipe of peace and guide the colonists to Old Towne where the settlement is made.

Original Undertakers:

Edward Howell

Edmund Needham

George Welbe

John Cooper

William Harker

Thomas Newell

Thomas Terry

Josiah Stanborough (who came later)

Daniel Howe, Captain of the vessel

Edmond and John Farrington

Thomas and Job Sayre

Hentry Walton

Allen Bread

Thomas Halsey

Richard Odel

Philip and Nathaniel Kyrtland

Thomas Farrington

Episode One

Scene III

Early Days and Early Ways

The Narrator:

The new Towne Street in 1649.

The Colony has grow ad prospered. Each freeholder owns his three acres of land on the street but farms and woodland are still common. Incomers must buy on the Great Plains. We see two fence-viewers “perambulating the bounds” nd with them a small boy who will be spanked at the bound, the better to impress his memory. The chimney viewers and cow keepers are busy. A group of young women are quilting a bride quilt for Margaret Howell whose banns are up. Next month she will marry Rev. John Moore of Southold. The unhappy Edmund Shaw sits despondent in the stocks ffor his excessive indulgence at John Cooper’s Tavern. Young Peregrine Stanborough takes his stripes for stealing green apples from Thomas Sayre’s orchard. Sarah Veale, attended by her faithful husband, Thomas, sits with a cleft stick on her tongue, while the Constable recites publicly “exhorbitant words of imprecation” she ahs used to the village reprobate, George Wood.

The Commentator:

Into this peaceful scene break two Pequot Indians. Phoebe Halsey (wife of Thomas) is coming from her home with her little daughter, Elizabeth. The Indians drag phoebe into the house and scalp her. The child escapes. Thomas Halsey, his three sons, and the nearby men puruse the murderers. They are met by Wyandanch, Chief of the Montauks, friend of the white man, who has caught the murderers. He delivers them to the Magistrates, who put them into the pillory until they can be sent to Hartford.

First Interlude

Children Play In The Olden Way

Their Games:

Farmer in the Dell

Looby Lou

London Bridge

Bull in the Ring

Once there was a Lassie

Episode Two

The XVIIth Century

Scene I

Town Meeting Day During the American Revolution

The Narrator:

Our great day of the year has come again. The street is filled with men, women and children from the length and breadth of the town of Southampton. Peddlers crying their wares and visiting Indians scurry about. The Town crier calls the meeting. The election is interrupted by a rider brining news of Lexington. Jesse and Elias Halsey and a friend set off by row boat to Connecticut. Scarcely are they out of sight when the post rider gallops in with news that Fort Ticonderoga has fallen to the Americans.

At once Captain John Hulburt assembles his Company of Minute Men. The first Stars and Stripes made by the women of Southampton Town is presented to the departing company.

Col. William Erskine of his Britannic Majesty’s Army rides in with his Aides coming to demand provender, to be refused at the Town’s peril.

When he has ridden away the dejected people return to their homes while Captain Elias Pelletreau, the old silversmith, organizes a home defense.

SECOND INTERLUDE

An Anthem to Liberty Sung by the United Choirs of Southampton, Hampton Bays, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor