Citations of Rev. Jesse I: "Men of Thought"

From "Men of Space: Profiles of the Leaders in Space Research, Development, and Exploration, Vol.1," by Shirley Thomas, 1960, p. 118.

• Abbie had grown up in the stimulating surrounding of a home where 'men of thought' were frequent visitors. Her father, the Reverend Jesse Halsey, was the minister of the Seventh Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati; Abbie recalls with pleasure that among the guests in their home were novelist Thomas Mann and the Labrador missionary-doctor-explorer, Sir Wilfred Grenfell--who once remained with them for two weeks.

From "The Big Red House Next Door: Other Stories, Verses, and Miscellany," by Ada Gregg Williams, 1915, p. 5, 192.

• Among those who have given the 'Sons of Shapur' their hearty endorsement and pledges of earnest support may be mentioned the Reverends Jesse Halsey, Archdeacon Charles G. Reade, David Philipson, Charles W. Donaldson, George A. Thayer, Justin N. Green, Louis Grossman, Louis G. Hoeck, and Jacob W. Kapp.

From "A Survey of the Ishams in England and America: Eight Hundred and Fifty Years," by Homer Worthington Brainard, 1938, p. 672.

• Helen Caroline, b. at Saranac Lake, N.Y., May 18, 1889; m. Mar. 26, 1910, Rev. Jesse Halsey, b. Southampton, N.Y., May 3, 1882. They spent four years after their marriage at Dr. Grenfell's Labrador Mission, but now reside in Cincinnati. Children: Charles Henry, b. Apr. 16, 191 1, in Labrador, m. Nov. 29, 1936, Justine Comstock, of Winston (probably Wilton), Conn.; Frederick Isham, b. Aug. 21, 1912, in Labrador; Helen Augusta, b. Feb. 8, 1914, in Southampton, N.Y.; Wilman Haynes, b. Sept. 30, 1920, d. ---; Abigail Lillian, b. August 9, 1922, in Cincinnati, O.

The House at 88 Grove Street

This house in the West Village was built in 1827, by my Great-Great-Great Grandfather Henry Halsey, a mason, and his brothers Jesse and Edward.

According to a letter written by my Great-Great Aunt Babbie in 1936 to the then owner of 88 Grove Street, Henry's father, Charles Fithian Halsey, had died in 1814 and his mother, Phoebe Rogers (daughter of Capt. William Rogers of Bridgehampton), "unable to give her boys a college education although she owned much land here, [left Watermill and] took them to New York and apprenticed them to a master mason. They built 88 Grove Street for themselves, buying Lot No. 52 from Thomas R. Mercein at the time, I think, when Greenwich Village was taken into the city. Henry brought his bride [Eliza Halsey] there, and his mother, brothers and two sisters [Elizabeth and Mary] lived on one floor, he and his wife on the other."

Aunt Babbie goes on to say that her father, my Great-Great Grandfather--the first Charles Henry Halsey--was born in the Grove Street home in 1830, as were his siblings Amanda in 1833, Wilman in 1836, Mary in 1839. A third son, Jesse, was born in Southampton in 1845. In an interview I conducted in December 2005, Aunt Abigail, however, contended that 49 North Main was built in 1832 and Amanda was the first child born in that home.

(A note on the progression of Jesse Halseys.)

In 1843, Jesse and Edward Halsey would become whaling captains and go to sea, while Henry (known as Capt. Harry of North End) would return with Eliza and their children to Southampton in 1832 and build the family home on North Main, employing many of the same architectural devices (including interior cornices and trim) that are found in the house at 88 Grove Street.

After the Halseys had returned to Long Island, the house at 88 Grove Street played a notable role in the history of 20th century social change.

In 1902, 88 Grove Street was owned by Ferruccio Vitale, a landscape architect, and rented to 5 staff members of the nearby Greenwich House settlement, serving as the colony's men's annex. The 5 residents were deemed "only the first among many well-to-do social progressives to occupy either 88 or 90 Grove Street over the next decade."

In 1903, former headworker of the University Settlement Robert Hunter and his wife, Caroline Stokes, moved in. They purchased the home in 1907. The house next door, No. 90, was purchased by Caroline's unmarried sister, the painter and social activist Helen Stokes, and let to various friends in her upper-middle-class socially progressive circle.

Starting in 1907, Grove Street housed various members of the A Club, a "more or less radical" writers' collective and "residential community in which gender roles did not divide along the conventional lines of men doing the 'real' work and women taking care of the the kids, meals, and the laundry." A Club member, social reformer, novelist, and journalist Ernest Poole took up residence in the house for a year, along with his family. In 1910, following the death of her first husband, another A Clubber--suffragist, writer, labor activist, witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and single mother of three who was written out of her own wealthy mother's will for her bohemian ways--Mary Heaton Vorse moved into the home with her aged father and small children.

In 1915, Helen Stokes's brother, James Graham Phelps Stokes, bought 88 Grove Street and moved in with his wife. J.G., and sisters Harriet and Caroline, were the scions of New York merchant and banker Anson Phelps Stokes. After a short but successful stint with the railroads, J.G. made headlines in 1902 when he left his parents' Madison Avenue mansion to become a settlement worker in the East Village. A frequent name on the city's Socialist ticket, Stokes would make headlines again in 1905, when we became engaged to Rose Harriet Pastor, "a young Jewess, who until two weeks ago was a special writer on The Jewish Daily News, and prior to that worked in a Cleveland cigar factory."

Quite the rabble-rouser, Rose Stokes would garner significant press attention for her presence at the 1918 trial of Eugene Debs and, according to the New York Times: "While the Stokeses lived at 88 Grove Rose Stokes risked arrest by passing out birth-control literature at Carnegie Hall in 1916 and was convicted in 1918 of Federal espionage charges for antiwar statements, although her 10-year sentence was set aside." The charges ultimately would be dropped, but on the night of November 3, 1918, police raided 88 Grove Street and arrested Rose for registering to vote in New York while under bail in Kansas for seditious utterances.

1920 US Census Record Jesse Halsey Cincinnati

Some minor inaccuracies here.

Cincinnati Ward 3, Hamilton, Ohio

Jesse Halsey	37
Helen Halsey	31
Charles Halsey	8
Frederick Halsey	7
Helen Halsey	5
Carrie Cunningham	49
Sarah Rhone	49

Coe 11s

Henry's parents John and Sarah also had 11 children including a daughter named Hadazsah.

Professions by Census

On the 1880 U.S. Federal Census, Noah Coe (great-grandfather on my mother's side) is listed as "Harness Maker." At that time he was 30 and, apparently, single. He would eventually have 11 children. Here he is, age 8, in 1860 with his mother and step-father. It would seem his father, Henry, died in 1853 when Noah was an infant, and shortly after the family moved from the western edge of New York state to a suburb of Chicago. Certainly, in 1860, Noah's mother, Mary Ann, was married to James Beatty. But absent a death record, perhaps Henry and Mary Ann divorced and Henry returned to New York to live with a cousin where lived in 1880 a single retired farmer by the same name? Too often, the census doesn't provide any information on occupation or relation to head of house.....

Here come the Oles!

I started the Halsey Helgeson Genealogy project a week ago and think it might be worthwhile to keep a somewhat narrative log of the findings, in addition to the files Ancestry.com allows you to keep and append to particular people and the project as a whole. Census records, birth/death/marriage records, land ownership, occupants, hired men, servants, borders, second wives, cousins, siblings, passenger lists, draft records, I'll attempt to note the more interesting and curious findings here. I've just found all the Oles on the Helgeson side!