Harry T. Halsey

Photo of Harry T. Halsey found in an old Bible belonging to his sister Abigail Fithian Halsey, labeled “H. J. Halsey, Southampton, May 6, 189-”

L to R: Charles Henry Halsey (1830-1906), Edna Halsey Ruland (1874-1948, seated in front), Lizbeth Halsey White (1869-1932), Joanna Augusta "Aunt Gus" Terry Halsey (1845-1929), Harry T. Halsey (1864-1903), Jesse Halsey (1882-1954), Thomas Terry (1808-1892), and Abigail Fithian Halsey (1873-1946) likely taken sometime around 1889 following the deaths of Melvina Terry Halsey (1842-1887) and Wilman N. Halsey (1838-1889).

Melvina Dunreath Terry Halsey's entry in Lizbeth's autograph book, 1883.

Harry’s entry in his sister Lizbeth Halsey White’s autograph book, 1884.

Abigail Fithian Halsey | 1873-1946

Southampton Press

Friday, Sept. 27, 1946

Miss Abigail F. Halsey Dies Following A Short Illness

Miss Abigail Fithian Halsey, teacher and historian, widely-known for her production of historical pageants, and author of Southampton’s Tercentenary Pageant, passed away Tuesday afternoon after a short illness.

Born October 2^nd, 1873, the daughter of Charles Henry Halsey and Melvina Terry Halsey, she was a direct descendant of one of Southampton’s earliest families; her brother is the Rev. Jesse Halsey, D.D., professor of Pastoral Theology at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, for 28 years pastor of the Seventh Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati. She leaves, besides her brother, three nieces and three nephews: Mrs. Gerald Adams, Mrs. Joseph Haroutunian, Mrs. James Van Allen, Harry Halsey White, Commander Edward P. White, Charles H. Halsey.

Funeral services were held yesterday afternoon at 3:30 o’clock at her home, North Main Street.

***

A Distinguished Southamptoner

With the death of “Miss Abbie” as she was affectionately known by everyone, Southampton, where she has been a source of wise counsel in historical fields for over two decades, loses a splendid woman and a true “lady of the old school.” Her poise, kindliness and dignity marked her so. Though more of the old school she had kept abreast with the modern and this, with her sense of humor, endeared her to young and old alike among her host of friends.

She and her sister, the late Mrs. Edward P. White, who wrote under the pen name Lizbeth Halsey White, early recognized the richness of Southampton’s history and preserved its traditions for future generations in their writings.

Miss Halsey was especially well-known for her dramatic accomplishments as author and director of historical pageants. For her ability to in this field she was sought, not only by her home village, but by distant communities wishing to depict their historical background in pageantry. These included extension work through Cornell University where many up-State County Fairs featured pageants of local history done by their own people, rather than commercial entertainment. At the request of Governor Al Smith, Miss Halsey wrote and produced the Pageant at Kingston to mark the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution.

Women's Community House | Ithaca, N.Y. | 1921

Educated at Newburgh (NY) girls school, New Paltz Normal and Columbia, Miss Halsey taught not only at Southampton, but in Westfield, N.J., at The Boy’s School, Haverford, Pa., the Northrup School in Minneapolis, and helped found the University School in Cincinnati. She founded the Community House at Ithaca, N.Y., which next week celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary (wheres he was to have been the guest of honor).

**4 August 1922 |Ogdensburg Republican-Journal

Abigail Fithian Halsey publishes Bulletin on Pageants with NY State College of Agriculture in Ithaca

Bald Hill School | Descendants of First Pupils Recall Events

August 23, 1929
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle

"The only former pupil and teacher [present] was Mrs. Amanda Terry Ruland of Terryville. Among those present were . . . Mrs. W. G. Corwin, Mrs. Thomas Corwin, Miss Ethel Corwin, Miss Ethel Corwin, Mr. and Mrs. L.W. Ruland of Southampton . . .the Rev. Jesse Halsey and Miss Abigail Halsey of Cincinnati, Ohio; Mrs. Luella M. Terry of Patchogue."

"The Bald Hills Schoolhouse"

In eighteen hundred seventeen

When James Monroe was President and when

Long Island’s Middle Country road

Was but a footpath way,

The few settlers

In the shadow of Bald Hills

Built a schoolhouse for their children.

A good school makes a settlement,

And others came, and children grew

To womanhood and manhood

Making homes.

In eighteen fifty three the school out grown

Was sold to one James Clark,

And on this site

The present one was built:

‘Tis known today both far and wide as Farmingville.

My Mother went to school here,

I can see her now,

Little Melvina, trudging on between

Her brothers, Tom and Dan’l,

Holding by the hand

Her little sister, Lyd

Who grew to teach the school,

That is my story

Yours is just the same,

Each one of you who gather’s here today.

Your Mother went to school here or your Father –maybe both,

Their names are carved upon the trees and in the desks.

Their feet have worn the door sills, as with laugh and shout and lessons done they whooped their way to freedom through that door.

Their road, to knowledge, rough perchance, and steep

Grew many flowers of joy along its way

Whose odors sweet are wafted down the years.

Their fathers all were farmers,

Men who owned their land,

And every man a king in his own right.

And in this place they gathered on the Sabbath to acknowledge Him, the giver of all good—Almighty God.

They took their joys, their sorrows

And their planting and their harvests from His hand.

Their children growing here in this good land,

(Inhaling freedom in the air they breathed),

Grew up together making their own homes and teaching to their children

As their fathers taught to them,

Lessons of uprightness and thrift.

Some went away, some wandered far,

But once a year we all come home.

Here in the schoolhouse in the wood

We meet to pay homage due those noble souls

Our fathers and our mothers, true Americans

This is America

This spot of ground

Where freeborn men and women

Made their homes and reared their children

In the fear of God,

Afraid of none

And bound to none

And envying non:--

God save America

By Abigail Fithian Halsey

For the Fiftieth anniversary

Of the Farmingville Reunion Association, 1935

Dr. John Nugent, Sr. | Obituary

The East Hampton Star | January 20, 1944

"Mother had died, quite young, when boy was five or less; father lived ever under its shadow; older sisters always thought that if father had been less stubborn (loyal) and had the new doctor who had come fresh from Ann Arbor and never lost a case of pneumonia, likely mother would have lived--who knows." --from "Hatchment" by Jesse Halsey

Blue Blood

Melvina Dunreath Terry [of Terrytown] married Charles Halsey [of Southampton], Melvina's sister, Joanna Augusta Terry married Charles's brother Wilmun Halsey [of Southampton], Melvina's brother, Thomas Reuben Terry, married Josephine Adelaide Terry and had Adelaide Terry who married W. G. Corwin [of Southampton], Melvina's sister Susan Alma Terry married George Kinsey, and Melvina's other sister Amanda LaCost Terry married Sylvester Ruland. Joanna Augusta Terry and Wilmun Halsey had one daughter, Edna Halsey. Amanda LaCost Terry and Sylvester Ruland had five children: Augustus, Phebe, Leroy, Melvina [Vinie], and Chester. Their son, Leroy Ruland, married Edna Halsey, his first cousin, [of Southampton].

Radio Audience (biographical play)

by Abigail Fithian Halsey | c1934

 

“Up early this morning, Aunt Marcia,” the young girl spoke.

Aunt Marcia, her shoulder shawl pinned tightly this cold morning turned from the radio. Her face was all alight.

“What is it, Auntie?” said the girl surprised. “You look as tho you’d seen a vision.”

“Seen and heard,” the older woman said, then stopped awhile. “My brother, on the radio, I’ve heard his voice at last.”

“Oh, really, Auntie, when?”

“Just now,” Aunt Marcia paused, the wonder still too great. “He’s out in Colorado, I am here. We’ve never heard him way off here before, never could get him someway, tho I know he speaks. No need to drive the lazy foot this morning, my mind, too, that was wide awake. John set the dial for me when he went to bed, at seven-thirty, I was listening in, and when the time came—why it seemed that I would never get his voice. Jazz there was, and some one singing ould, and then above the rest was ONE-TWO-THREE and ONE-TWO-THREE, that morning exercise, MY BROTHER, his own voice. His well-loved voice, I’d know it ‘cross the sea.”

“How proud his father’d be, his dad who never wanted him to preach, but keep a store or run a farm like all the rest. But no, Dave had ambition—and love, too, love for all.”

“And Mother, then I thought of her—his little mother who had tired too soon and had to leave his childhood to us girls, who didn’t know so well as she the way to care for little boys.”

“But sister Lyd, she was eighteen, she took the baby in her care and brought him up as well as sisters can. If she were here how proud she’d be, how proud she was all through the years when he was growin’ up. And when he preached in the old church first time, his mother couldn’t have been much prouder than dear sister Lyd.”

“And his Aunt Gene, oh dear, how I go on—they’re all gone, all gone, and I alone am left.”

“And then I thought—it came just like a flash—there’s none of them, not one, that NEEDS to hear like this, with mortal ears like me. They always hear, by ways divine, O GOD, the wonder—and the joy.”

“I heard his prayer. I heard him say, ‘Shine on our sorrow, Father, in the light of thy faith, Shine on our broken hopes in the light of thy joy.’ O Brother, Little Brother, we are listening, all, yes, all of us, or here or there—what the matter? Gift divine that man has found, has found at last the way devised by God so long ago.”

“The jazz cut in. I couldn’t hear him now, I thought I’d lost him and I almost snapped the dial off, but no, ‘twas here, the well-loved voice, right in the room, beside me, and I heard, above the jazz, above the strident sounds. Above the interminable ONE-TWO-, ONE-TWO-THREE, I heard his voice, these words, just these, ‘And someway God comes through.’”

By the Cherry Tree Fire | Abigail Fithian Halsey

When the good old russet apple tree
Beside the garden gate

Had gone the way of all the earth

And met its kindly fate,

We chopped it down and sawed the trunk

And piled a mighty pyre

That kept the good old airtight hot

For many a winter fire,

And planted in its place a tree

That Mother, nothing daunted,

Had wished to see beside that gate,

The one she’d always wanted,

An Ox-heart cherry tree at last.

It blossomed white in May,—

But June time came, and Mother went

Along her shining way,

Year after year her cherry tree

Spread boughs above the gate,

Where little ones she never knew

Played early here and late,—

Young Charles & Freck & Little Bill

And John and Ab and Honey

And Luz and Nan and Little Sam

And Bob and Jane and Sonny.

One Day came Daddy with cement

And said, just speaking slow,

“We’ll lean a mark for years ahead

To see how much we grow.”

There underneath the cherry tree

Their hands laid imprints down,

While honey bees and holly hocks

All gaily “went to town.”

September came and back to school

The merry children went.

The hurricane blew down the tree,

But left the old cement.

Today I find the imprints still

Of Ab and Sam and Honey,

Of Charles & Freck & Little Bill

Of Nancy, Luz and Sonny.

Tonight I sit beside the fire

And watch in glowing ember

The cherry tree of other years

Bring back a “long remember.”

Tonight where are the little hands?

In other worlds, in other lands.

Oh Mother, on your shining way

Forgive our tears,

Forgive our fears.

In this new day

Oh, may we know

What you have learned so long ago,—

That love alone like little hands

Leaves imprints on the years.

A.F.H.

October 16, 1943

Harry T. Halsey | Obituary

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Sea-Side Times | Southampton, N. Y.

Thursday, October 1, 1903

 

A Man of Sterling Character and Christian Fortitude

Harry T. Halsey died at his home in this village at six o’clock yesterday morning after a long and wasting illness from which he has suffered for many years.

Harry Thomas Halsey was born in Southampton November 12, 1864. He was the eldest son of Charles Henry and Melvina Terry Halsey. He was named for his two grandfathers, Captain Harry Halsey, of Southampton, and Mr. Thomas Terry, of Terryville, near Port Jefferson.

Mr. Halsey was a young man of broad intelligence and sterling character. He was educated at the old Southampton Academy. At an early age he united with the Presbyterian Church and was later made a ruling elder being one of the youngest men ever chose to set in that capacity.

A dozen years ago he entered into a partnership with W. Seymour White under the firm name of Halsey and White to deal in farm produce, farmers’ supplies, and coal. The business is still in a flourishing condition.

Very soon after embarking in business Mr. Halsey was seized with an alarming affection of the lungs and went to Colorado in quest of health. He returned the following year but little benefited, but through the skill of physicians and extreme care on his part the progress of the disease was arrested.

He has spent several winters in the South, in Virginia, Georgia, or the Carolinas, daring to remain at home only during the summer. For more than ten years he has made a hard battle for life and for the last year or two has been in very terrible condition.

Last winter he lived near Thomasville, GA, and when he returned home his friends finally realized that it was his last winter S[?]. He was sick most of the time and confined to the house during the past summer and [?] past summers but was [?] when the expected end actually came.

The funeral service will be held his home tomorrow after at half past 1 o’clock.

On October 19, 1899, Mr. Halsey married Miss Ida D. Pettet, a favorite teacher at the new Southampton Union School. No children were born to them.

Besides a widow and his father, Mr. Halsey leaves [behind a brother, Jesse Halsey, and two sisters,] Miss Abigail Halsey [and Mrs. Edward P. White.]

Hatchment

by Jesse Halsey

“They heard not the voice of Him that spake to me.”

{Jack Gardner [is a] soldier who joins church on return because of sunset experience; boy at the wood-pile.}

Hog—swine

Pig—Pork

Cow—beef

Hash—Popui; Webster in one of his definitions of hash, frankly says “A mess.”

Not to tarry over definition—a best this is, but popui—with sauce or without, a hash of experience. No horse meat, we trust—though we can testify it’s not so bad when you don’t know it. We had a sausage factory improvised in Siberia during the War, supposedly and actually we used reindeer meat, but I have a suspicion that ex cavalry equines go in at times, rabbits (arctic hares that is), and when one is skun a mongrel Eskimo dog looks just the same and if you don’t know it—tastes the same or similar. (I have eaten snakes in Japan, didn’t know the difference, thinking they were eels—which I catch thru the ice on Long Island, skin and fry—a delectable morsel.)

Why this dietetic metaphor—I can’t say; we started with hash. And this is just a sample here and there out of an oldster’s reminiscences of things grave and gay; res sacra and res secularia, unrelated likely to any logic, but tied into the stream of life for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, till death doth part soul and body and memory fades out of fructifies into heavenly harvest—or hellish (most hells of any gripping reality to men since Dante are constructed of memories).

But to get on; or rather to go back. Some one asked Duncan Spaeth, coach of the Princeton Crew why it was that rowing was his favorite sport—“Only thing I know where by looking back you can get ahead.” (Parenthesis, no two. The very time that Henry Ford called all history “bunk” he, nonetheless, was putting little concave mirrors on the front of the drivers [side] so he could see the road behind; that’s the only way to drive safely to at least glance on the road behind.)

With this recurring justification or alibi or reminiscence, we start again. A new England kitchen, big fireplace, brick oven, Saturday night and baked beans and brown bread. A red damask spic and span table cloth on a square walnut table; four persons seated. Kerosene lamp, flickers from the smoldering fireplace; the lazy hum of the tea kettle, now that the tea is brewed. A boy maybe twelve, and his older sister back to the wall, facing the fire; bewildered father at one end of the table, elderly aunt at the other.

Melvina Terry Halsey, 1842-1887

Father seemed old to the boy whose mother was dead, he himself as one born out of due time; father seemed old, he was old, looked old, felt old (rheumatism; its antidote a jug of hard cider with whittlings of barberry in it; the boy often went a mile down the lane to Uncle Harvey's barberry for twigs and bark for the decoction). Mother had died, quite young, when boy was five or less; father lived ever under its shadow; older sisters always thought that if father had been less stubborn (loyal) and had the new doctor who had come fresh from Ann Arbor and never lost a case of pneumonia, likely mother would have lived--who knows.

Aunt Gussie’s (her husband father's brother, she was mother's sister) husband, Uncle Will, our favorite out of a baker's dozen, at least, of uncles, had taken the boy, od six, his adult brother (and a neighbor's boy of five—Lewis Hildreth—on a clamming expedition. One horse box wagon, two wash tubs with ropes attached and down to Sebonac "gut" where the tide cuts in and out between the big bay and the cold spring, scallop bond—Ram Island and other ramifying creeks. (They say cricks down east, our way.) . . .

The men go out on the flats and beyond, the crop is plentiful and the tubs soon filled—a long hour or so—the boys play on the shore, shells and stones in many shapes and colors collected and arranged, and houses built and paddling in the lapping wash of the tiny waves; swimming lessons will come later when the men get back. Uncle Will is nearing the shore, crossing the channel, when he throws up his hands and flounders in the tide rip. The boys think he is playing a trick to amuse them. (He was always up to making them laugh—our favorite uncle.) He goes down “for the third time” as the saying goes and Lewis says (I can hear his lisp now), “I guess he’s gone down to look for his hat.” Alarmed, they begin to run up and down the beach wafting their coats like the old folks do when they sight a whale, shouting till finally Harry comes slowly thru the teeming water but fast he can, reaching the flat he kicks off the tub handle half of it, thus free from the rope and tub he plunges in the deep water of the gut and though the tide has carried tub and body far into the inlet he reaches the tub, now empty, tied to uncle Will and brings the body to the shore; the boys following the shoreline come to the place and stand helpless by while Harry rolls the body on the tub trying to extract the water from the lungs. (No Red Cross training in those days; only sailor’s methods.) Some furtive clam diggers from another township across the bay whose sloop is hidden behind Ram Island, hearing the boys’ shouts finally come and they and Harry work on half an hour without avail. The boy hears his brother now, across the intervening half century plus, as Harry lifts our uncle’s lifeless body into the one horse farm wagon, carefully bedded with dry seaweed from the shore—a fitting coach for an old whaler, but still (brothers sob) it seems inappropriate for a man just entering middle life. The long slow drive home, Harry and the boys on the seat, the body in the wagon shrouded in the horse blanket. The boys eat the lunch—wondering why Harry doesn’t. (They were six and five.) We stop at the first house from the shore and tell Cap’n ‘Lias (White), he saddles his horse and rides to the village to find Father, who like the elder brother of the parable only in this one regard was “in the field,” after going to tell his sister-in-law and her daughter, joins us at the foot of the lane as we come up to the house.

No professional morticians in those days—not there at least—and old Aunt Libbie who had ushered us all into the world and our parents before us—Aunt Libbie takes over. The boy at her direction goes across the street to Father’s barn to show the men where to find the rough pine plank 48’’ x 6’ on which his mother had been “laid out” some months before; stored up there in the hay mow (the east end where a great round shiny ships spar tied the hand hewn oak rafters together. What a job for a boy—or boys, for “Little Lewis” went along, too. (He died the next year.) But that’s another story; we wander too far; let’s get back to the kitchen table. There are shadows in the room you see; not of westerning sun’s making for the flicker of the fireplace logs—Father at one end of the table, Aunt Gussie at the other, going their best for the others’ sake to be cheerful.

. . . No levity; but much wisdom in the meagre conversation. Meagre is the gossip ("Gossip" says father, who studies the dictionary and knew his Latin from Academy days, "'Gossip' was once a good word akin to Gospel"--let's make it that and when some really unpleasant sure enough bit of unsavory morsel of truth filtered in, Father would say, "As Biney (his wife, my mother) used to say, 'Maye, for we all have a crook in the elbow.'" Then he would add as was his Scriptural custom, "Charity covereth a multitude of sins."

"the past will be restored, the lost will be found"

Lizbeth May Halsey White

Lizbeth May Halsey White

Lizbeth Halsey White (6 Apr 1869 - 25 Oct 1932) was the sister of Harry, Abigail Fithian, and Rev. Jesse Halsey, daughter of Charles and Melvina. Lizbeth was 18 when her mother died, and for the six years following Melvina's death, Lizbeth helped her father tend the home, cared for her younger siblings, and worked on the farm. In 1892, when Lizbeth was 23, she married Edward White, then 27, and they and what would be their three children lived with Edward's parents, his uncle, three servants, and six or so boarders in the Old Post House a few blocks down Main Street from the Halsey family home in Southampton. Later, Abigail (Aunt Babbie) lived with Lizbeth and her family in the Post home, too, despite Jesse having built Abigail "the bungalow" behind the Halsey family home at 49 No. Main. Edward was a justice of the peace, as well as founder of the Southampton Colonial Society.

Edward Post White, Sr.

Lizbeth was the town historian of Southampton during the '20s and early '30s, the second person to hold said position and the first woman. The dedication page to Abigail Fithian Halsey's 1940 book "In Old Southampton," published by Columbia University Press and chronicling the history of the town of Southampton from its founding in the 1640s through its role in the Revolutionary War, reads:

MY SISTER, LIZBETH HALSEY WHITE
HISTORIAN OF THE TOWN OF SOUTHAMPTON 1923-1932
BEGAN THESE STORIES IN 1932
IT HAS BEEN A LABOR OF LOVE TO COMPLETE THE SERIES
IN HER MEMORY

Lizbeth with son Edward Post White, Jr. and Dorothy Pearson, March 1923
Cap'n Eddie and Dot were married in July 1924

From the memorial written by Robert Keene at Annual Meeting of Southampton Colonial Society, May 17, 2985:

Lizbeth White was the founding Regent of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and it was Lizbeth White who was instrumental in bringing to the attention of the Town Board in 1928 the design of the Town Flag, as presented by the D.A.R. . . .
And it was Lizbeth who revealed that the first woman to step ashore at what was later to be called Conscience Point was Eleanor, the wife of the leader of the first settlers, Edward Howell.

In advocating for the creation of an organization dedicated to the preservation of historical landmarks in 1915, Lizbeth wrote:

"Many of our Town's most precious memorials have vanished forever. Our fathers were too busy planting and colonizing, wrestling life from hard conditions, to think much about leaving behind them personal souvenirs . . . 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 a light upon its life . . . Begin with today and work backward as fast as possible. Gradually the past will be restored, the lost will be found."

Photographs of Lizbeth and Edward Post White, courtesy of Con Crowley, from a collection of photos belonging to his grandfather, Captain Ed White, Jr. Apparently, Cap'n Eddie kept the photograph album with him at sea, as he spent a lifetime in the Navy, Merchant Marine, and Coast Guard.  

1910 United States Federal Census Record 
1930 United States Federal Census Record
Pedigree view for Lizbeth May Halsey White on Ancestry.com

GENEALOGICAL RECORD: DANIEL TERRY to Rev. Jesse Halsey

GENEALOGICAL RECORD: DANIEL TERRY to Rev. Jesse Halsey

Prepared by Mrs. Edward P. White, Southampton, N.Y., 1932

VI         Daniel  b Aug. 11, 1767              Coram, L.I.

                        d Sept. 20, 1846              Farmingville, L.I.

                        M Lydia Homan Aug. 31, 1794

                        Dau. *Ebenezer Homan

                       

                        b Aug. 5, 1775               Yaphank, L.I.

                        d Jan. 15, 1851               Farmingville, L.I.

VII        Thomas b Jan. 9, 1808                 Coram, L.I.

                        d June 13, 1892               Terryville, L.I.

                       

                        M March 28, 1832 Phebe Rachel Hudson

                        Dau. Richard Hudson and wife Rachel Akerly.

           

                        b May 2, 1811               Bayport, L.I.

                        d Oct. 21, 1880              Terryville, L.I.

VIII       Melvina b June 5, 1842                Farmingville, L.I.

                        d June 2, 1887                Southampton, L.I.

                        M Charles Henry, son of Henry & Eliza Halsey

                         

                        b Oct. 10, 1830               New York City

                        d Aug. 9, 1906                Southampton, L.I.

                        **chn. Harry Thomas, Lizabeth M., Abigail Fithian, Jesse.

IX         Jesse   b May 3, 1882                Southampton, L.I.

                        d

                         

                        M. March 26, 1910 Helen Haines, dau. Robert & ____ Isham, Lake Placid, N.Y.

                        

                        b May 18, 1892

                        Chn. Charles Halsey       b Apr. 6 1911

                        Frederick Isham              b Aug. 22, 1912

                        Helen Augusta                . Feb. 8, 1914

                        Wilmun Haines               b. Sept. 30, 1920 d May 20, 1928

                        Abigail Fithian                b Aug 9, 1922

*Ebenezer Homan –Yaphank, Brookhaven Town, Signed Association May 1775  Mather’s p. 1057, Capt. Nathan Rose, 3^rd Co.

**Harry Thomas Halsey, b. Nov. 12, 1863 d. Sept. 30, 1903; Lizbeth M. b. April 6 1869,. Married Dec. 25, 1892, Edward son of Capt. Hubert & Sarah Post White; Abigail Fithian b. Oct. 2, 1873; Jesse.

1902

"Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord"; the words came slowly but with firm enunciation, deep groanings and checked sobs were impounded by their cadence no doubt. The habit of years could not be broken. The family were at morning prayers though the oldest son had just died. My father, past seventy, read on, for fifty years this had been the daily routine, now it stood him in good stead, as it had before. Twenty years ago his young wife had died, now it was his eldest son; "He knoweth our frame, He remembreth . . ." He hesitated then stopped. It was a good terminus; the rest was so obvious just now.

--Jesse Halsey

"the word hobbgoblin still chills my spine"

by Rev. Jesse Halsey

One word more about family prayers. I believe it was a bore to my brother and sisters just as it was to me. As a little boy I knelt by father's rocker and while he prayed I squinted with one eye half open out through the tiny panes of bubbled glass and saw all sorts of curious things in the trees and in the houses across the road, distorted by the window panes. Fairy stories were never read to me as a boy, but those window panes and the enforced leisure of family prayers gave me my opportunity. I pity children who have to depend on movies for their imaginative 'frame of reference.'

It's time to get back to Pilgrim's Progress. I remember it as The Book, the only one except the Bible that was available for Sunday use. It had in it a few pictures of the Holy City that I often looked at after my mother died. I was five then. Another picture, a steel engraving, showed Christians passing through the Valley of the Shadow. The very word hobbgoblin still chills my spine, to this hour. But the Valley was beset with them--hobbgoblins. I was afraid to look yet could not forbear.

Father would read by the hour. After mother died his loneliness made him my companion. Night after night he would read me to sleep. Week nights it was history, some poetry like Milton, stories from the Youth's Companion, but chiefly history. That and stories that he had heard Grandfather tell, Indians, the 'Red Coats,' whaling--no end of that from Father and all his cronies. I should say they were a dignified lot, mostly.

A note on the progression of Jesses

Sarah Fithian and Henry Halsey had a son Jesse in 1739, who married Charity White and signed the Articles of Association in Southampton in 1775. That first Jesse Halsey was a captain in the Revolutionary War and suffered injuries at the Battle of Monmouth. Captain Jesse and Charity had seven children: Charity, Jesse, Charles Fithian, Keturah, Sarah, Hannah, and Abigail. Their son Jesse died in infancy. Jesse died in 1818. His son, Charles Fithian, and Phebe Rogers had Henry (my Great-Great-Great Grandfather, known also as Captain Harry), along with Elizabeth, Captain Jesse, Captain Edward (both of whom were whalers), Mary, and Hannah.

Captain Jesse married Mary Budd and went to sea, they had no children. Captain Jesse's older brother, Henry, builder of 49 North Main (in 1832 or 1842?) and 88 Grove Street, however, named his third son Jesse in 1845, tho that Jesse would die in 1861, a month short of his 16th birthday.

Henry's eldest son, the first Charles Henry, married Melvina Terry in 1863. (Complicating things further, Charles Henry's brother Wilmun married Melvina's sister Augusta--aka the famous Aunt Gus--and they had, in 1874, the first in a series of Aunt Ednas). Charles and Melvina had Harry in 1864, Lizbeth in 1869, Abigail Fithian in 1873, and Jesse (later Rev. Dr. Jesse and my Great Grandfather) in 1882. Melvina, known as Binn, died in 1887, when Jesse was 5. A year later, Jesse witnessed the accidental drowning of his father's brother, his beloved Uncle Wilmun, while the two were clamming together. Following those tragedies, Aunt Gus and her fourteen-year-old daughter Edna became de facto members of Great Grandfather Jesse's household; in a biographical sketch Jesse writes that he was raised by his eldest sister--18 at the time of her mother's death--and his Aunt Gussie.

"we all have a crook in the elbow"

Melvina Dunreath* Terry Halsey |
B: Jun. 5, 1840,
D: Jun. 2, 1887
(*I just discovered the D. stands for Dunreath & she had 9 siblings)

from "Hatchment" by Jesse Halsey

With this recurring justification or alibi or reminiscence, we start again. A new England kitchen, big fireplace, brick oven, Saturday night and baked beans and brown bread. A red damask spic and span table cloth on a square walnut table; four persons seated. Kerosene lamp, flickers from the smoldering fireplace; the lazy hum of the tea kettle, now that the tea is brewed. A boy maybe twelve, and his older sister back to the wall, facing the fire; bewildered father at one end of the table, elderly aunt at the other.

Father seemed old to the boy whose mother was dead, he himself as one born out of due time; father seemed old, he was old, looked old, felt old (rheumatism; its antidote a jug of hard cider with whittlings of barberry in it; the boy often went a mile down the lane to Uncle Harvey's barberry for twigs and bark for the decoction). Mother had died, quite young, when boy was five or less; father lived ever under its shadow; older sisters always thought that if father had been less stubborn (loyal) and had the new doctor who had come fresh from Ann Arbor and never lost a case of pneumonia, likely mother would have lived--who knows.

Aunt Gussie's (her husband father's brother, she was mother's sister) husband, Uncle Will, our favorite out of a baker's dozen, at least, of uncles, had taken the boy, od six, his adult brother (and a neighbor's boy of five--Lewis Hildreth--on a clamming expedition. One horse box wagon, two wash tubs with ropes attached and down to Sebonac "gut" where the tide cuts in and out between the big bay and the cold spring, scallop bond--Ram Island and other ramifying creeks. (They say cricks down east, our way.) . . .

. . . No levity; but much wisdom in the meagre conversation. Meagre is the gossip ("Gossip" says father, who studies the dictionary and knew his Latin from Academy days, "'Gossip' was once a good word akin to Gospel"--let's make it that and when some really unpleasant sure enough bit of unsavory morsel of truth filtered in, Father would say, "As Biney (his wife, my mother) used to say, 'Maye, for we all have a crook in the elbow.'" Then he would add as was his Scriptural custom, "Charity covereth a multitude of sins."

The Memory of the Just is Blessed

Charles Henry Halsey
B: Oct. 10, 1830
D: Aug. 9, 1906

Melvina D. Terry
B: Jun. 5, 1840
D: Jun. 2, 1887
His Wife



Joanna Augusta Halsey
B: Dec. 25, 1845
D: May 27, 1929
Widow of Wilmun Halsey

Wilmun Halsey
B: Jan. 12, 1836
D: Aug. 2, 1889

Harry T. Halsey
B: Nov. 12, 1864
D: Sept. 30, 1903








Abigail Fithian Halsey
B: Oct. 2, 1878
D: Oct. 14, 1946








Rev. Jesse Halsey D.D.
B: 1882
D: 1954
A Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ







Frederick Isham Halsey
B: 1912
D: 1239
Be Thou Faithful







Wilmun H. Halsey
B: 1920
D: 1928
The Child Ministered unto the Lord

a wee motherless bairn

Letter to Jesse Halsey, age 21, in Southampton
[from Mrs. Craven, wife of Rev. Walter Craven]

4 Perry St., Morristown, NJ
Oct. 25, 1903

My Dear Young Friend,
I have never lost interest in you since I saw you a wee motherless bairn trothing in & out the problem of your young sister's heart and life. How wonderfully God has cared for you & brought you to a true manhood.

Your strong desire for the ministry was very precious to me, & since then the inhibitions to your plans have greatly touched me. There is nothing more perplexing than those times in life when we come to a stand still saying "Lord what wilt thou have me to do?" & hear no answer.

That we are guided if we truly desire to be I am sure. But the Guidance is not always along the line of our plans & our desires. If God has called you to the ministry of the Gospel you will be a minister of the Gospel though no man lays hand of ordination on your head.

When we were in Southampton my Husband often longed for an assistant, a young man who could aid him in gleaning tho comes of the field. He used often to say if I could send & c-- But there was no one on whom he could depend for more than occasional work. God loves a tired & tested instrument.

He wants you to know your self as He knows you. A young man came to Mr. C one day to say, "I want to be a minister." Mr. C soon found he wanted the ministry as a Profession & God has little use for such men in the great harvest field of the world. So the question every man should answer is Why do I want to be a minister. My Husband answered that, "Because I want to win souls to X." His Father said "You will make a very good business man & a very poor preacher, here is a good business offer." Mr. C answered "I w'd rather live on $300 a year & preach X, win souls to Him, than gain the greatest fortune earth ever saw."

God gave him every whole souls for his hire. --

Do you want soul? Is the cry of your heart "Souls of men, why will ye scatter like a crowd of frightened sheep? Foolish hearts! Why will ye wander from a love so true & deep?" I never cross in a crowded ferry boat, but these lines come to me followed by a prayer for the multitudes over whom Jesus wept.

Souls are every where. There is great need in your own scattered places. North Sea, was a bit of our Parish we longed to do more for. Ask Lord to give you access to that neighborhood. Hold a prayer meeting there every week, add a S.S. we began with the S.S. Prepare carefully for that meeting. Make it a model meeting. Take some real gospel meat to them not so full or deep a dish that no one else will dare to speak. Take some congenial friend with you who can help with singing. Hold gospel meetings, ask for an out pouring of the Holy Spirit & expect it, & God can give you the first prints of your ministry then & there. The first revival Mr. C ever enjoyed was in meetings held when he was yet a young man in his Mother's house while he taught here in NJ between col. & sem. The fire of that little meeting spread, rooms, hall stairs were full. Later it spread out into the church & finally thru the town. That was between college and Sem. God tested & answered thru too worldly Father's injury. Father C was a X man, but he had great ambitions for his children.

Do not be afraid of God's testing times. See God not only as your loving Heavenly Father, your unerring Guide, but the Great Irresistible God -- Read Job. God's answer to Job. See that He has His place & work for you. Put your self absolutely in the Alter of His unchangeable love, to be Molded into His uses for your life. Do not say my plans have been thwarted because God does not want me in His ministry, rather say I will be His minister what ever comes in what ever way is open to my hand. I will begin to serve to the full of my power in the Gospel here & now. The need is so great for souls that turn for Christ. We knew & loved your dear Mother, & your Bro. Mr. C felt him to be his most helpful young man. So I need not apologize for writing you out of a very full heart of interest in you and in the Gospel.

If you feel like writing I shall be most happy to hear from you. Please give my love to your father & believe me very truly your friend.

Mrs. Walter C