DRAFT 1: Oct. 31, 1939

DRAFT 1: Justine Comstock Halsey to Myron Barbour, Esq.
Abt Oct. 31, 1939
JCH: 435 Riverside Street, Reno
MB: Cincinnati, Ohio

Yesterday I was in Judge Lundsfords office and [he] suggested my writing to you.

Can you advise me in regard to the delay in Charles['s] signed power of attorney? Time is passing so quickly and the sixteenth will soon be here.

It is very important that [I be freed] I am free to reestablish myself as soon as possible because living and other expenses have been far higher than anticipated and any added expense will be hard to meet.

October 5, 1939

Letter: Charles Halsey to Justine Comstock Halsey (14 pages total)

Thursday night
October 5, 1939
CHH : 552 Riverside Dr, NYC
JCH: 435 Riverside Street, Reno
Page 10, last paragraph:

P.S. God Bless you darling and don’t do anything you will be sorry for later. Come back to us when you are rested and then decide the next step after we have tried to make another go of it. Read the clipping enclosed. It might have happened to ours once. But if could be worse now if his mommie doesn’t come back. He knows, and he doesn’t forget easily. I wish our little baby* could talk. I’ll bet he could reveal a lot. Don’t you think so. How is Florida weather--or perhaps you wouldn’t know. Maybe it is Colorado or Georgia or it might be right here in New York. I have had that feeling all week. But one never knows, does one. I hope I will soon tho dearest for the suspense is driving me batty. I feel shaky all over—do at least that for me and then on the 19th come back and we will be waiting. I pull[ed] the wish bone on that. The [other] one [is] too green to break, [from] Friday of last week. The other one I have saved for us both to pull when you come back.

May God guide you and keep you and bring you home to Cameron and me in a short time. The days will be eternities but well worth surviving just to see you and know you are here again. No one else will take your place for a long long time and Margaret is no exception.

Cameron says “I love my mommie. Mommie come home pretty soon.” Charles says, “I love you Justine my darling wife. Please return to two children that need a mother like you our hearts are open and so is our door.” May God grant you safe return.

Still your adoring and bewildered, but still loving husband,
Charlie

P.S.S. I kiss your lips and hand madam, take one from Cam too. xxxxx

P.S.S.S. I will reread your farewell note: I wish I could believe you darling “This is for the best of all of us. Believe me.” It will be the best for all of us if I you come back to us mommie. You love Cameron so very much—I know you do—Prove that you do dear one, try returning. We want you. I’ll take care of him, but I can not do it all. It takes both of us together – I”ll fight for him and do all in my power, but I will also fight for fury on ‘came(?) you can and have to do that which I can’t. It takes two to bring them into the world. It takes two to raise them and you are the only one who can rightfully do that at my side. Mrs. Van Dorn still thinks you’re home* [and will be] mighty surprised. Incidentally I have mail here for you—where do I send it? Please tell me--I’ll be grateful to you if you will—

It will get easier, but easiest when you have come back.

I have some good pictures to show you if you will return—one enclosed to make you think you will miss him if you can’t watch him grow—Came home honey. God will help you to come back to us. Just give him a chance.

Charlie

N.Y. Herald Tribune 1954

Dr. Halsey, 71 Dies; Teacher of Theology
New York Herald Tribune
Jan. 12, 1954

SOUTHAMPTON, L.I.- The Rev. Jesse Halsey, seventy-one, retired professor of practical theology at the McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, died today at Southampton Hospital. Since his retirement in 1952, he lived here on North Main St.

Born in Southampton, Dr. Halsey was educated at Princeton Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary and Wooster College. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1910, and for the next three years was a member of Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell's Labrador Medical Mission.

In World War I, he was sent to Murmansk, Russia, by the Y.M.C.A. and he remained as consular agent in that city during the Bolshevik Revolution representing the United States and British governments.

After the war he returned to his pastorate at the Seventh Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, a post he held until 1940. In 1953, the church dedicated a chapel to him.

In 1941, he joined the faculty at McCormick Theological Seminary.

Surviving are his wife, Mrs. Helen Isham Halsey; a son, Charles Henry Halsey, of Westhampton, L.I., and two daughters, Mrs. Joseph Haroutunian, of Chicago, and Mrs. James Van Allen, of Princeton.

JH bio on file @Princeton

Jesse Halsey
Father: Charles Henry Halsey
Mother: Melvina D. Terry Halsey
Date of Birth: May 3, 1882, at Southampton, Long Island, NY.

He studied at Southampton High School and joined the First Presbyterian Church there at age 12. He lived on and worked on his father’s farm from 1902 to 1906, covering his college subjects at home due to illness in the family. He came to Princeton, entering the seminary in September 1906 and also taking courses at Princeton University. After studying at Princeton from 1906-1908 he went on to complete his seminary education at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, from which he received his BDiv degree. He was ordained by the Nassau Presbytery on June 6, 1910.

Jesse Halsey served in the Spanish-American War; he worked as a missionary with the Grenfell Labrador Mission in the summer of 1909 and again after his graduation from Union from the summer of 1910 until the winter of 1912; he lectured in the U.S. on behalf of the Grenfell Labrador Mission from the winter of 1912 until June of 1913, and then was called to became pastor of the Seventh Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. He served at the Seventh Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati from September 1913 until December 1941, with the exception of a small break around the time of World War I when he served as a Chaplain at a British naval station and worked with the American Red Cross, and then spent some time working in Russia, with the YMCA in Moscow and with the American Consulate in Murmansk (1917-1918). In 1941 he received a call to be Professor of Pastoral Theology and Liturgics at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, where he taught until his retirement in May, 1952. He published articles in theological magazines, newspapers, and the McCormick Seminary official publications, and published two books, “The Living Hope” in 1938 and “Open Prayer” in 1951.

He received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Wooster College in Ohio in 1927, and at various times served as a member of the Pension Board of the Presbyterian Church, USA; as Moderator of the Synod of Ohio; as Moderator of the Cincinnati Presbytery; as Vice-Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church; as President of the Cincinnati Council of Churches; as a member of the Board of Lane Seminary; as a member of the Board of Western College; and as a member of the Chaplain’s Board in Washington, DC. After his retirement he returned to Southampton, NY, where he lived until his death in 1954.

He married Helen Caroline Isham on March 28, 1910, at Lake Placid, NY. Children were Charles Henry Halsey, born April 6, 1911, and Frederick Isham Halsey, born August 21, 1912, both at St. Anthony in Newfoundland, Canada; Helen Augusta Halsey, born February 8, 1914, and Wilmun Haynes Halsey, born September 30, 1920, both born in Cincinnati; and Abigail Fithian Halsey, born August 9, 1942, at Southampton, Long Island, NY.

"His heart a skipper's Heart"

In Memoriam
The Rev. Jesse Halsey, D.D.
1882 - 1954

The sea was always in his eyes
As in his blood;
The English earth his heritage,
His sires, the skippers of proud ships
Out of Southampton's
New World port
Two hundred years agone.

He lov'd the salt-tang'd air,
The restless, rolling water drew him
From a thousand miles,
Like tides upon his heart
Toward home and rest and peace.

His hands were seaman's hands,
Busy, apt to any task
To build, to smooth,
To climb where few would dare,
To set a gentle flower,
To bind a wound,
To brush aside a tear,
To pray.

Like season'd oak, his heart,
Handwrought and mellowed,
Weathered fitting by the foul and fair;
He knew his craft - the hearts of men
And like his Master,
No stranger he to ax and plane,
Or storm-toss'd day,
The satisfying weariness of eventide;
His art - the ships he built -
The lives he sent out from his ways
Sound wrought and rigged,
To wrest and bring
A hard-won cargo safely home.

His heart a skipper's Heart,
The Master's Order, his;
And certain as a chart that fact
To all
Who signed on in his company.

No wonder to his mates,
The Master, satisfied,
Called out, "Cast off!"
And he obeyed.

--Dr. Samuel Gregory Warr, associate pastor to Dr. Halsey, Seventh Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1940-1941

A Labrador Doctor

The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell (1919)
"Presentation copy with original mounted photographs. Inscribed and signed by Sir Grenfell on the half-title, with a mounted photograph of "The Doctor on board the 'Stratheona,'" (caption in another hand). Also, inscribed on the front pastedown, "W.J. Brown, Christmas 1919, Best wishes, Jesse Halsey." Halsey was an associate of Grenfell's at the Deep Sea Mission, and inserted before the frontispiece of the book is a 4-page illustrated program for "Illustrated Lectures by Rev. Jesse Halsey" at The Players in Boston."


"Other original photographs mounted on the front endpaper and flyleaves, all captioned, include "Dr. Grenfell greeted by the school children in St. Anthony"; "Jesse Halsey, Labrador & Northern Newfoundland, 1909 to Nov. 1912"; "The 'Boss' and the 'Gang' (boxes of food & clothing from the 'States' being unloaded by U.S. college students)"; "J.H. in Labrador 'dickey,"; and "Tuckamne Croft - Charles Henry & Helen I. Halsey" (a woman with dog sled in front of house)."

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

Pomfret Class of 1932

A Handbook of Private Schools for American Boys and Girls: An Annual Survey (1936) by Porter Sargent

• POMFRET, CONN. Alt 389ft. Pop 1617 (1930).
• Motor Route 101 from Providence, R.L

"This pleasant country town with its many old houses and churches is rich in memories of Israel Putnam. Pomfret School faces the green across from the old Ben Grosvenor Inn. The 140 acre estate of Rectory School is on Pomfret Street."

POMFRET SCHOOL Boys Ages 12-18 Est 1894.
Halleck Lefferts, Ph.B., Yale, Head Master.

• Enr: Bdg 117. Fac: 16. Tui: $1450. Courses 5 yrs: Col Prep
• High Sch 1-4 Grade VTIL Incorporated. Trustees 18. Prizes 45. Episcopal. C E B candidates '35, 45; 7 3o->34, 340.
  
• Entered Col '35, 16; *3o- J 34, 117. Alumni 830. Approved by N E Col Ent Certif Bd. Member N E Assoc Col and Secondary Sch.

"William E. Peck, one of the great schoolmasters of the country, after twelve years as head of St. Mark's resigned to establish this school to more fully carry out his own ideals. William Beach Olmsted, his successor, worked unselfishly and joyously to secure the interest of people of wealth and social prominence, and created for the school a beautiful setting. The old order passed with him in 1029 and Mr. Lefferts, educated at Taft and Yale, was appointed head master. An ardent democrat, non-believer in conformity to type, Mr. Lefferts encourages independent thinking among his boys. He has created a new Pomfret."