Comstock and Halsey Wed

3 December 1936 | Hartford Courant

Mass Meeting to Key Up Campaign | Two Christian Clergymen to Share in Program on Eve of Start of Jewish Welfare Fund Drive

The Cincinnati Enquirer · 15 Nov 1934

Miss Julia Resor Foster | Daughter of Early Clifton Family Dies After a Long Illness

Cincinnati Enquirer | 23 May 1937

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

from Welcome Home by Lucia Berlin

"We got to Race’s house on Sunday afternoon. This is the thing I would so love to express, my awe, my complete incomprehension of a real house where birches grow that were planted when each child was born with attics and cellars and summerhouses and all the people in the town have known everyone all their lives and all their relatives and they see each other all the time and like it and speak of birth and death with this fantastic War and Peace acceptance. Aunt Fan, showing us her (lovely) house—took us into the study—a real New England paneled study and said “We don’t use it much, except for funerals, to put the coats in.”

"How lovely it was that Race brought me home—that “Sandy” came home. We are having a vacation and a rest and a honeymoon. Walk down Main St. and through these crazy flowers and grass all over—look thru boxes in the attic—with books and photos and poems by Race and have dinner in dining room with flowers and candles and butter plates and Mark picked corn from a corn field and washed it and ate it. (He is out of his HEAD!) Went to see cousin Andy and his wife Esther and Dorns, these people are TOO much— they work so hard and so easily and mulch (I love that word) and sow and reap and can and prune and graft and darn and bake and plant all their food and everything is so cyclical and ORDERED and NICE—they are all nice—with this crazy wit and an INTEREST in things, everything, and a joy from the views they see every day. I am meeting everyone. They take me in. I don’t mean they approve or accept or like me, altho they do, I think, but they take me into their War and Peace scene, to their cradles in the attic, and Jeff sleeping in Grandma Proctor’s crib that was Bobby’s crib too and it’s so nice and terrifying. I’ve never known a family." --1959 [September]Little Falls, New York

Cincinnati Club Hears Address on Bolshevism

March 6, 1920 | The Southern Lumberman

Cincinnati, Ohio, March 1—An interesting talk on Bolshevism was made before the Lumbermens’ Club of Cincinnati at its monthly dinner at the Businessmen’s Club here tonight by the Rev. Jesse Halsey, pastor of the Seventh Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati. Mr. Halsey was an agent of the United States department of state in Russia for eighteen months and was an eye-witness to the development in the country during the time that Lenin and Trotsky gained control. He was stationed at Murmansk, north of Archangel, for a time and visited in Petrograd and Moscow, besides traveling over a large part of Siberia.

Mr. Halsey differentiated between Bolshevism as a political and economic program as applied to Russia and the term as it is now commonly used to denote the radical spirit of unrest throughout the world. He said many people were now applying it indiscriminately to people who differed in opinion with them over political-economic questions.

As to Russian Bolshevism as exemplified under the government of Lenin and Trotsky, Mr. Halsey declared that in practice their program had been greatly modified from the ideas they had enunciated when gaining their power over Russia.

“Bolshevism as a political program has been greatly modified in Russia,” Mr. Halsey declared. “Lenin has resorted to a system of capitalism in Russia to force production. After ten months of a government of destruction he now reverted to a system of capitalism of the most reactionary character. As applied at first the principles of Bolshevism meant nothing but destruction, and whatever of a constructive nature there has been in Russia has been along lines that in theory at least the Bolshevists have most of denounced.

“The ideal six-hour workday of the Bolshevists has now degenerated into a sixteen-hour workday, with the workmen kept under a strict military discipline to force production. The government, in order to attract Russian capital to its industries has offered high rates of interest and are now offering all sorts of guarantees and high rates of interest to foreign capital to come into the country.

“The people who have suffered most under the Red Terror of the Bolshevists were the intellectual radicals who were responsible for the overthrow of the Czar. They are the ones the Bolshevists have persecuted and not the old retainers of the Czar. As a matter of fact many of these have come to the support of the Bolshevist government and the leader of the army against the Rumanians is not a general developed under Trotsky, but an old-time general of the Czar.

“The intellectual class of Russians have been weak and indifferent to the crisis through which their country has passed. The Russians have a word, ‘Nichevo,’ which described their spirit and attitude to things. It indicates a shrug of the shoulders and ‘I can’t help it, I don’t care’ spirit.

“The Bolshevists gained their power by appealing to the emotions of war-worn and hungry people. They offered food, division of the land and peace to the country at a time when the people were dispirited and hungry. They have retained their power by military discipline over the people. They have disarmed all who belong to parties other than their own and having all the arms and ammunition in the country are able to effect their will without a military opposition.

“The Bolshevists are a majority party of the radicals, but do not represent a majority of the Russian people. At the best only between 20 and 30 percent of the Russian people were Bolshevists.

“Bolshevism will never conquer America,” Mr. Halsey asserted. “The long period of evolution in which our political and economic system has been developing together with the fact that the great mass of Americans are educated, is a great bulwark against any red revolution in America. In Russia there was no middle class and 85 percent of the people were illiterate. When Kerensky and his radical government took the helm, there was no background among the Russian people for his experiment. To America the development of our institutions since 1776 will prove an effective armor against Bolshevism.”

"A Snap-Shot from Russia"

The Churchman | February 16, 1918

The Rev. Jesse Halsey, who sends from Moscow “A Snap-Shot from Russia,” is pastor of the Seventh Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati. He sailed from San Francisco in September with the first Y.M.C.A. contingent to go to Russia, where he was placed in charge of the supplies department of the Y. in that country. The Bolshevik General has ordered all the secretaries out of the camps, and it is probable that the Y. men are now on their way to France. In a note sent with his article, Mr. Halsey says: “I was so fortunate as to stand within ten feet of the patriarch during parts of the ceremony, thanks to the American embassy. There were only 500 admitted to the church besides the high clergy. A recent “revolution (we have them every week here) had closed the Kremlin to most people. I stood with the ‘bishops and other clergy’ and saw everything. It was four hours long, but was like going back to Constantinople in the days of Constantine. The music is tremendous, even in the smallest churches—and there are nearly 300 in Moscow alone. I have been through one battle, a week long, but got no scratches.”

For four years Mr. Halsey was with Dr. Grenfell on the coast of Labrador, where the Doctor dubbed him “the saint in overalls” owing to the unclerical uniform he wore on six days of the week while installing all the heating and lighting systems of Dr. Grenfell’s hospitals.

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A Snap-Shot From Russia

The following article published in The Churchman of February 16^th has a very local interest coming as it does from the pen of one of our own “boys.” Mr. Halsey went out to Russia last September with a party of eleven colleagues to engage in Y.M.C.A. work in Russia. He was stationed in Moscow and was priviledged to witness the ceremonies herein described.

The last message from Mr. Halsey was from Kola, where he had gone on a long sledding trip to Murmonsk, which is on the shores of the Arctic Sea, 200 miles north of Archangel.

Moscow, December 6.—On the spot where the late (and we supposed the last) Czar of all the Russias crowned himself; where many of his predecessors had stood on similar occasions; with the thirty bells of “Ivan Veliky” chiming out on the frosty, sunrise air; with the boom of the sixty-ton “ascension” bell landing diapason to the majestic choral of the choirs; in the presence of saints and angels, frescoed from the floor to the dome; before the iconostas studied with its profusion of precious stones; under the rough scaffolding, hiding the cruel scars of bombardment from the latest “revolution;” in the many-shadowed light flung down from the hundred tapered candelabrum (made from French silver picked up by the Cossacks after Napoleon’s retreat); here in the Uspensky Sbor (Cathedral of the Assumption) on the Kremlin hill in the holy city of Moscow, the new Patriarch of the Greco-Russian Church was set apart to his high office.

At the completion of the ceremony surrounded by his clergy, preceded by the holy icons, and followed by the crowd, he made a circuit of the Kremlin courtyard, dispensing his blessing and sprinkling holy water up on the bystanders, from a vessel used by many of his ancient predecessors.

In 1721, Peter the Great suppressed the patriarchate and placed the mitre upon his own head. In its place he instituted the Holy Synod which, until the revolution of last March, was the ruling body of the Russian Church. The Metropolites of Kief, Moscow and Petrograd, and the Exarch of Georgia were ex officio members. In addition, the Czar “nominated” eight clergymen, six of them bishops and the other two, ordinarily, his private chaplains. The convener of the Synod, called the procurator, was always a layman, and appointed by the Czar. He held a portfolio as a minister of State, and directed the schools and seminaries of the Church. These, with other powers, made him the practical dictator in all ecclesiastical policies. The Czar might dismiss any member of the Synod, at will, and at his convocation each member took the following oath: “I acknowledge him (the Czar) to be the supreme judge in this spiritual assembly.”

With the fall of the old regime the Church was free to elect its own head, and for the past months, throughout the country, delegates have been selected to choose candidates for the office of patriarch. At length, these delegates, two hundred in number, selected and training to fill the position. On Sunday, November 18, in accord with Apostolic usage (Acts 1:26) lots were cast “and the lot fell upon” Tichon, Metropolitan of Moscow. On December 4 he was inducted into office.

It would require Dean Stanley’s knowledge and insight rightly to appreciate and interpret the symbolism of the majestic pageant, but even upon the untutored mind it made a strong impression. At sunrise the procession emerged from the Synod and proceeded to the cathedral, where the candidate was conducted to a raised dais near the east end. Here, surrounded by the abbots of the great monasteries, arrayed in their purple robes, the new Primate received the homages of his bishops. One by one, “glorious in their apparel,” copes rigid with gold, jewel bedight mitres, they came, bowed low and kissed the Patriarch’s hand, yielding allegiance in feudal fashion.

The Eucharist was celebrated with all the gorgeous pomp of the Greek ritual; then Anastasiu, Archbishop of Kishinef, delivered the sermon, outlining the duties of the holy office and urging the people to uphold the hands of the “Holy Father” during these troublous times.

The Patriarch was then led out before the alter by the two unsuccessful candidates and Vladimar, the senior Metropolitan, charged him with the duties of his office and presented him as a symbol of his authority, with the staff of “Peter the Wonderworker.” Recognizing the weight of the responsibility placed upon him, and asking for the prayers of the people, he would undertake to bear “this cross of responsibility even as Christ bore his,” the Patriarch said. Several of the higher clergy then came forward and presented him with valuable historical memorials of former patriarchs of the Church, and as the mitre of Nikon, appropriated by Peter two hundred years ago, sparkling with diamonds and pearls and surmounted by a jeweled cross, was placed upon his head by Vladimar, the choirs broke out in a glad Te Deum, in which the congregation heartily joined. Each worshipper had provided himself with a candle when entering and at this point in the service these thousand tapers were lighted while the Primate made his way to his throne—once that of Czar Alexis Michalovich—and from there blessed the people. In deep, resonant tones, the officiating deacon proclaimed—“Long live our Holy Father, Tichon, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia,” and with all still singing, the clergy filed out of the cathedral.

The Russian service is always impressive, especially the music, as the well-trained choirs are seconded by the congregation in the chants, which everyone seems to know. There is no instrumental accompaniment, but the unison singing of one choir, with studied pauses the leave the echoes reverberating through the recesses of the church, is taken up by a hidden choir in another part, and in his turn the priest answers back—one continuous antiphonal. This particular service “for the installation of a Patriarch” had not been heard for two centuries, but so careful was the preparation that no pauses nor discords were apparent from one end to the other.

The new Patriarch is just past sixty, of medium stature, somewhat bald, but with an ample fringe of modest proportions, quite white, frames a mouth that pictures gentleness rather than decision. He is reported as interested in church affairs solely, is not a politician and has hopes of making the Church a contributing factor in restoring stability to Russia in the present crisis.

The new Synod has just convened—December 8—and consists of the Patriarch and six members, elected for two-year terms. Thus is the spirit of democracy working in the Russian Church; it remains to be seen whether the Church, until so recently a State institution, can adjust itself to an environment permeated by extreme democratic ideals.