When Sputnik Crashed in Manitowoc

5-7-21 News Headline :  Large out of control Chinese rocket set to reenter Earth's atmosphere

That headline reminded me of a sliver of history we discovered in our travels years ago.  In 2009, my wife and I were on a quest to visit all 50 states, which is why we found ourselves in Wisconsin in April of that year.  She is a teacher, and so while others go off on Spring Break to Florida, we went to Wisconsin.  And had a ball.  

When you travel, you can discover strange things that you were not looking for. On that trip we found ourselves staying overnight in Manitowoc.  How do you pronounce that?   Just like it looks?  Nope.  In a four syllable word you can put the accent on any one of the four.  I chose the 3rd one and pronounced it Man uh TOE ick.  And immediately announced to any knowing local listener that I was from out of town.  The correct pronunciation is with emphasis on the 4th syllable, Man uh tuh WOCK.  We were set straight by a waitress in a diner that morning, and have repented and sin no more.

The town is one of a series of Wisconsin towns along the coast of Lake Michigan.  They all have lovely views, and in several of them I did a morning run and enjoyed the sun rising over the vast expanse of Lake Michigan.  There was a submarine docked on the river that flows into the lake, and so we ended up taking that tour, and that turned out to be the No 1 destination for visitors to Manitowoc.  The Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company built 28 submarines during World War II that, like salmon seeking an outlet to the sea, found their way out of Lake Michigan, down the Mississippi River and out to the Gulf of Mexico and service during the war.

But the 7th highest rated site for visitors was the main discovery for us.  It was a circle drawn in the middle of 8th Street in a residential neighborhood , with a bronze marker on the nearby sidewalk explaining the significance of the circle.  On September 5, 1962, a 20 pound piece of metal came crashing down from the sky with enough force to leave cracks in the road surface.  Two policemen were called to the scene to find a red hot piece of something embedded in the street.  The Sputnik IV satellite had gone awry after its launch in 1960 - and in 1962 the headlines announced that it was re-entering the atmosphere, and that any parts of it that did not burn up would be making a hard landing on earth.  This 20 pound chunk was one of several that rained down over Wisconsin that day.  

As is the case with all UFO's, the government rushed in and carted away the evidence. NASA ended up

making several casts of the item, and then gave the original piece back to Mother Russia.  One of the replicas found its way back home to Manitowoc, where it has an honored place among paintings by Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol and Mary Cassatt.  The marker in the street is in front of the Rahr-West Art Museum, and so the Museum volunteered to hold and display this piece of history.  

The people of Manitowoc are very proud to be the location of this sliver of history, so much so that on the 2nd weekend in September, they host an annual festival, Sputnikfest, which according to their website  was  named "one of the Top Five Funkiest Festivals in the country by Readers Digest ..."  The festival's slogan?  "Sputnik landed here...Why don't you?"

If the Chinese spacecraft survives re-entry in the next day, and doesn't kill anyone, then perhaps some other lucky town will be able to turn lemons into lemonade as they have done in Manitowoc, taking a small piece of history and making it the basis for a "funky" annual festival celebrating not the history itself as much as the ability of resourceful and creative people to turn anything into an excuse for a party!  

For more information on Sputnikfest, start here:  https://www.manitowoc.org/1109/Sputnikfest

And if you want to visit the "chunk", then here is the homepage for the Rahr-West Museum:  https://www.manitowoc.org/1006/Rahr-West-Art-Museum

“A Wild Night Ride – One of the Swiftest Military Movements on Record”

I was in Baltimore recently, visiting my daughter.  We stood on Federal Hill in her neighborhood – a downtown hill of about 50 feet that overlooks the Inner Harbor.  I told her about a recent news article that I had come across about our Civil War ancestor, Samuel Humes, and a trip he made to Baltimore.  And I guessed that while visiting, he likely stood where we were standing, atop Federal Hill and looking across the harbor to downtown Baltimore.   It’s one of the best views in town.  Generally, when you do genealogy research, you find just the dry bones left in the records – birth, marriage and death dates, census records, family names.  All good – but sometimes you long for a story that brings some of this history to life.  That’s what I found last month.  So first, some background. 

In June of 1863, General Robert E. Lee determined to take the war north again, as he had done the previous year before being turned back at Antietam.  Virginia had borne the brunt of the ravages of war in the North.  Time for the Northern states to feel the pain of plunder and occupation.  On the way, he could threaten Washington, Baltimore, Harrisburg and Philadelphia. Maybe seize the coal fields of upstate Pennsylvania and set them on fire, destroying the fuel that powered its movements by train.  His army of about 75,000 men began streaming north that month, following different routes. 

General J.E.B. Stuart

The “eyes” of his army, General J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, moved north through the heart of Virginia – with the mission to find and report on the location of the Union Army.  But Stuart was distracted – running into skirmishes, and then finding and seizing a Union supply train, which slowed him down.  His troops crossed the Potomac River near Dranesville, Virginia.  Barb’s daughter lives nearby and in a visit a few months ago I ran along the C&O Trail along the Potomac near where Stuart crossed.

The citizens of Baltimore were alarmed.  The city was defended by militia, who generally did not stand and fight against an organized group of veteran soldiers like the ones commanded by Stuart.  The Union troops that were not marching to try to head off Lee’s march north were protecting the capital, 40 miles south.  That is where we find Samuel Humes, on the afternoon of June 25, 1863, at Camp Barry and Fort Lincoln, near the current National Arboretum.

Hearing of the threat to Baltimore posed by Stuart, General Barry, the head of Union artillery, was asked if he could put some troops and cannons on a train and get them up to Baltimore immediately.  It was estimated that it might take at least 30 hours to assemble the men, horses, equipment and supplies, march them to the train, get them loaded and heading north to Baltimore. That was not good enough – it might be too late.

The Major in charge at Fort Lincoln offered another solution – he would take 3 batteries of artillery and march there under cover of night – and be in Baltimore in 20 hours or less.  Generally, an artillery unit did not march independently of the foot soldiers – the infantry – who would protect them; and there were no infantry units to spare.  The Major suggested that road north was mostly paved, that the noise of the night march would suggest a much larger army, and the Rebels would not expect an artillery unit to be marching alone without infantry support.  According to the newspaper account, “The General sat looking the Major right in the face for the moment thinking, and then said, “Will you try it?”  The Major responded, “Give me the orders and I’ll go.” 

Within an hour, the Major had assembled his three chosen batteries, including Samuel Humes’ unit, the 1^st Pa Light Artillery, Battery D, and they were marching north by about 4:30 p.m.  By dark, they were to Laurel, where they rested their horses for an hour.  The men did not ride on the “limbers” and caissons so that the horses would not be more stressed.  Some officers dismounted and marched as well to conserve the strength of their horses.  Four brief stops were made to rest both men and horses.  Only one person was met on the way – a Southern sympathizer who mistook the Union troops for Rebels, and told them that Stuart had crossed the Patapsco at nearby Ellicott City, and that the city of Baltimore was lightly defended by militia who “won’t fight”.  The Union batteries marched into Monument Square in downtown Baltimore and the Major reported to the commanding officer there at 4:50 a.m.  The troops had marched the 40 miles in 12 hours and 15 minutes.  Baltimore was secured.

In hindsight, Stuart was probably not going to threaten Baltimore.  He was already running late for his date with destiny at Gettysburg.  He arrived there on the afternoon of the 2nd day of the battle.  General Lee has been without his “eyes and ears”, for most of the week.  When he walked in, Lee greeted him: “Well, General Stuart, you are here at last.”  Lee’s rebuke was mild, considering the situation.  However, according to an aide who witnessed the meeting, the conversation was “painful beyond description.” 

Quartermaster Sgt. Samuel Humes

Perhaps, Samuel Humes and Battery D made their way back to the defensive positions outside of Washington, after several days of rest, and receiving the reports of the Union victory at Gettysburg and the Rebel retreat. However, his service record indicates that by the following month, his battery moved off to Harpers Ferry, and they took part in the Shenandoah Campaign of the following year. Son Drew and I are heading off to Harpers Ferry in a few days, to walk in more footsteps of Samuel Humes. For me, the search for family history never gets old.  

The news article that I came across was the result of a search for any mention of the battery commander, Andrew Rosney.  As you do more research, you start to branch out and attack the problem from different ways.  The article I found was the reminiscences of the Major, more than 20 years later, as related to a Boston Globe reporter.  It may have the “quality control” problems of all boastful 20-year-old memories, but the basic story of a night march would not have been made up out of whole cloth.  And so a little bit more of the life and times of G-G-Grandfather Samuel Humes comes to light.  It was fun to be able to stand atop Federal Hill with my son and daughter, and her daughter, 157 years later, and feel that we were walking in the footsteps of our Civil War ancestor. 

Here is a link to the original 1884 article about the "Wild Night Ride".  

And here is the view that Sam may have had from Federal Hill when he was there:

And here are four of his descendants on Federal Hill in 2020:

Did Grandpa pitch against Jim Thorpe?

I had a visit with Grandpa this morning, via newspapers.com. Though I now know the basic outlines of his life, each time I pick my research back up, I find some new item that fills in the gaps in my knowledge of his life.

My mother's father, Ralph Owens Hall, died in 1940. His wife had passed away 9 years earlier, so with the death of the father, Mom and her 3 siblings were orphaned. She and her brother Sam, still school age, were put on a train and sent up to live with an aunt in Philadelphia. They carried their basic clothing and a few small possessions that Depression-era children owned.  Not much family history made the trip north.  Needless to say, I never knew my grandfather, who died 15 years before I was born, other than through the recollections that my mother had of their limited time together.

When my daughter went off to college, she chose Dickinson College in Carlisle.  I had known that grandfather Ralph had attended Dickinson as well.  That was the extent of my knowledge about him.  But when my daughter went there, I befriended the archivist, and found that Dickinson had old yearbooks, college newspapers and other records from the time period when Ralph was there.  By then I was also much more active with genealogy and newspaper searches, and so the question of “Who was Ralph Owens Hall?” began to reveal itself to me. 

Dickinson has a tradition where the immense front doors to Old West, the oldest building on campus, are swung open twice a year:  once for the incoming freshman to walk through to sign a register, and once when the outgoing seniors walk out of the building to receive their diplomas.  I was there to see my daughter march in and out.  When first hearing of the tradition, I asked the archivist whether the register existed for September of 1902, when Ralph entered with the freshman class.  Yes indeed – it exists and so I was able to see his signature from that day.  Seeing my daughter’s experience, I could imagine the same thing happening in 1902.  Through the existing yearbooks, I was able to see photos of the handsome young man who enrolled in college at that time.

Why did Ralph choose Dickinson College?  He was a good athlete.  The athletic director at Dickinson, Forest Craver, offered to pay Ralph’s college expenses and board if he would play for Dickinson.  A college sports scholarship!  But this was offered in the days before sports scholarships existed.  The offer was made “under the table”.  Ralph accepted, and off he went to Dickinson College, where he was captain of the basketball team, a pitcher on the baseball team, Junior Class president, and involved with a variety of other clubs and activities.  He was a BMOC, and graduated in June of 1906 with a bachelors degree in philosophy.  His “major” is what I discovered this morning.

There was one wrinkle, though.  Craver did not make good on his promise to pay Ralph’s expenses.  So Ralph sued him.  And won.  He was awarded $217 in damages.  With the ensuing publicity, Craver resigned in disgrace.  But a few years later he was back at Dickinson, and served the college through a long career of teaching and coaching.  Dickinson was not the first college to offer payments to athletes, and Craver was doing what the others were doing.  But for whatever reason, Ralph was not paid what was promised, and this dirty laundry became public. 

Dickinson College is in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  At that time, there was a school right down the road, the Carlisle Indian School, that had some good athletes.  The two schools competed in certain sports together, including baseball.  A new student showed up at the Indian School in 1907, an all-around athlete named Jim Thorpe.  He excelled at every sport.  One account said that “Legend has it that Thorpe began his athletic career at Carlisle in 1907 when he walked past the track and beat the school's high jumpers with an impromptu 5'9" jump, still wearing plain clothes.”  Thorpe had a successful career in Carlisle, playing football, baseball, lacrosse, and track and field.  In the 1912 Olympics, Thorpe won both the pentathlon and decathlon events.  He went on to a career in pro football and baseball, and was named the Greatest Athlete of the 20th Century by various sources. 

There was a family story passed down that Grandfather Ralph had a tryout with the Washington Senators baseball team, and that he once pitched against Jim Thorpe.  That is my Holy Grail of family genealogy right now:  to find that box score and see what resulted.  I was so close one morning, in the bowels of the Dickinson College archives.  The weekly college newspaper reported on sports results, with box scores for baseball.  I found that the two teams played each other.  But Thorpe was not listed in the Carlisle lineup.  Ralph graduated in 1906.  I later found that Thorpe came to Carlisle in 1907.  They seem to have just missed each other.  So what about the family story? 

Ralph stayed in Carlisle the next year – he started law school at Dickinson.  He had coached baseball in his past, and so may have helped coach the Dickinson team of 1907.  My search led me to a baseball historian who was researching the Indian players from Carlisle.  He said a lot of these players would play semi-pro ball over the summers, and so Ralph may well have played against Thorpe in that setting.  Thorpe’s Olympic gold medals were taken away from him after his Olympic performance for that very reason, because he had been paid to play baseball before the Olympics. I am not certain that there were ever boxscores for these semi-pro games - young men simply competing for fun during the summers.  My Holy Grail remains out there, the question, "Did these two face each other?", unanswered.

At the time, the Olympic competition was limited to amateur athletes, and so even taking $5 to play baseball in a summer league was enough to disqualify an athlete from competing.  As late as 1980, recall that the U.S. Olympic hockey team that beat the Russian team was made up of all college players.  Not because they were the best players that the U.S. had to offer, but because they were still “amateurs”.  As were the Russian players– technically – because they were the Red Army team, paid by their country to serve in the Army – and assigned to work … as hockey players!  That distinction continued to erode in the 80’s and by 1992, the first Dream Team of professional basketball players competed in the Olympics.

The Olympic Committee righted the wrong it had done to Jim Thorpe by restoring his medals and his listing as the winner of the 1912 medals, in 1983, thirty years after his death.  In a curious coda to his life, at his death the small upstate Pennsylvania town of Mauch Chunk offered to change its name to Jim Thorpe, if the family would allow him to be buried in the town.  The deal was consummated.

Earlier this year, Barb and I spent a fun weekend in the town of Jim Thorpe, and visited his grave there.  In a memorial grove, there are statues of him, and a large crypt that contain his remains.  From time to time efforts are made to move his remains back to his home state of Oklahoma.  But so far, he remains here in Pennsylvania. 

Grandfather Ralph became a lawyer, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania law school and then being admitted to the bar in 1910.  He was a practicing lawyer for about 10 years, and then became a financial services entrepreneur, selling insurance, buying and selling mortgages, at one time he was a distributor of home heaters, and then he started a credit agency.  When the Great Depression hit, his businesses suffered.  A year later his wife died, leaving him a single father of 4 children in 1931.  

He soldiered on with his business for a number of years, and then one night at a family dinner in 1935, he proposed to move to Florida.  A family vote was taken – all were in favor, other than oldest son Ralph O. Hall Jr., who had graduated from college and was making a life of his own in suburban Philadelphia.   By 1936, Dad, three kids and a dog named Skippy were living in a trailer on Jacksonville Beach.  They later moved to a nice cottage on a lake in Orlando.  My mother remembered the life as idyllic.  She rode horses, they paddled in the lake, her brother and sister were ranked tennis players, and they generally took their meals at a local restaurant.  They survived on a monthly check that Ralph’s aunt sent them, and odd jobs that he picked up.

Mom recalled that her father “smoked like a chimney”.  He had been in a car crash in 1935 that crushed his chest, and so he always had breathing issues.  At times he would sleep upright, in a chair in the kitchen or even in the car.   On the morning of December 4, 1940, Mom remembered waking up, knowing it was a little past the regular time to get up for school, and thinking "Dad forgot to wake us.  Good, I'll get a little more sleep."  Dad and Sam slept in the front room of the house. Mom and her sister (then off at college) slept in a back bedroom.  Mom woke up a little later, sensing that something was wrong.  She poked her head in the boys' room, didn't see anything, and then went out to the kitchen and then the car to see if Dad was asleep in either place.  Not finding him there, she came back to the boy's bedroom and saw her father's body on the floor of the bedroom between the bed and the wall.  She had somehow not seen him there when she first checked.  He was 59 years old. 

Grandfather was cremated and shipped north for burial at the family plot of his hometown of Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. His 25-year-old son and namesake, Ralph O. Hall Jr., was given the task of taking the ashes up on the train and seeing to the burial. My mother had never been to her father’s grave and so in 2003, she and I made the pilgrimage to Beech Creek. We found the grave and the marker. Ralph’s parents and grandparents were there, as well as his two brothers. But no Ralph. There were likely no funds in the family till to pay for a marker in 1940, and so Grandfather’s name was never carved into the stone. But there is room on that stone, a local stone cutter has just assured me. Last week I ordered that the work be done. Hopefully in the summer of 2021 we can have a family gathering there, to see the name on the stone, and to remember the grandfather we never knew. And the circle will remain unbroken.

Slavery in Marple and Newtown Townships

 I’ve spent days searching for records of slaves in Newtown and Marple townships, from the first census in 1790 until 1860, the last census before the Civil War. There was one slave reported in the 1790 census for Newtown. By the next census in 1800, there were no slaves in Newtown. That is the only slave that appears in either township for that time period. Why was that?

The 1790 census showing one slave in Newtown

Photo courtesy of the Newtown Square Historical Society

Beginning in the 1680s, Newtown and Marple were settled by Quakers. Their religion, Quakerism, born in the 1650s, was relatively young, and Quaker thinkers were still exploring what it meant to be Quaker. In 1688, six years after Pennsylvania was founded, Quakers in Germantown presented a petition urging their local meeting to support the abolition of slavery. That was the first protest against slavery made by a religious body in the English colonies.

Newtown Square Friends Meeting

Photo courtesy of the Newtown Square Historical Society

Generations of Quakers continued the assault on the “peculiar institution” of slavery. They pressured their members to free their slaves, and also worked to eliminate the importing and sale of slaves.

Original Springfield Friends Meeting House

Photo courtesy of the Marple Historical Society

In 1775, Quakers led the charge in founding the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the first in the country. The legislature, responding to pressure for change, passed the Gradual Abolition Act in 1780, providing that any child of a slave mother born after that time was free; prohibiting the import of slaves into the state; and placing registration requirements on slave owners. Failure to register resulted in freedom for the slaves. The law was revolutionary: the first time in human history that a democratic government took affirmative steps to abolish slavery, which had existed in the world since the Biblical age and beyond.

Table on which the 1688 Petition Against Slavery was written and signed

Photo from Wikipedia (public domain)

That law did not immediately eliminate all slavery in Pennsylvania. In 1840, there were still 64 people held in bondage; a law passed in 1847 finally freed the rest. But the Quakers in Pennsylvania remained active: The Underground Railroad was largely a Quaker initiative in Pennsylvania, and Quakers continued to exert pressure for change on the national level.

Small populations of freed Black slaves lived in Newtown and Marple during those years, most in family units. They were small farmers and laborers, like their Quaker neighbors. In Marple, the Black community formed its own AME church.

Early Free Black citizens in Marple Newtown

Photo courtesy of the Marple Historical Society

As a tight-knit agrarian community, people of goodwill in those churches and meeting houses continued to pray for change by day, and at night, they worked together to speed the flow on the Underground Railroad. Today, they rest in their respective cemeteries: Newtown Square Friends, Springfield Friends and the Hayti Cemetery in Marple.

Hayti Cemetery, final resting place of free blacks in Marple Newtown community

Photo courtesy of the Marple Historical Society

For more history on Newtown Square, Delaware County, and membership information, please visit the Newtown Square Historical Society’s website at www.HistoricNewtownSquare.org.

A Heart Lost and Found in Hot Springs, Arkansas

On a street in Manhattan in 1960, piano player and accompanist Ralph Sharon ran into two songwriters who had been trying to sell him songs for his singer to try out.  As a favor to them, he took one of them, an old song written in 1953, and at home he shoved it into a drawer and forgot about it.  A year later, while packing for a series of gigs across the country, he sees the song and thinks “we’re playing that city later in the tour– maybe we can use this” and sticks it in his suitcase.  

In Hot Springs, Arkansas, they do a singing date in a club called The Vapors, a 60's modern new nightclub  owned by gangster and former Cotton Club owner Owney Madden.  A 15 year old local boy, an aspiring musician, later recalls peeking in the window to see the performance that night.  After the show, Sharon pulls out the song and plays the tune for his singer.  He says, “We’re heading there soon – this might be a good local tune for you to try out.”  They run through the song together at the piano in the bar of the Vapors before an audience of one:  the bartender.  He tells them “If you record that song, I’ll be the first to buy it.” 

In December of 1961, at the Venetian Room of the Fairmount Hotel in San Francisco, the singer performs the song for the first time in public.  He later says “That song helped make me a world citizen.  It allowed me to live, work and sing in any city on the globe.  It changed my whole life.”  

He recorded it the following month, as the B side to another song.  But the disc jockeys liked the B side, it received all the airplay, and it won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1962.  The song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”, became the signature song for the singer, Tony Bennett. The song also made a fortune as well for the two struggling songwriters, George Cory and Douglass Cross, two Bay Area natives who had moved to New York but expressed their longing for home in their city by the bay.

The club where the song was first sung by Tony Bennett did not fare as well.  The state of Arkansas finally cracked down on the illegal gambling that had been tolerated in Hot Springs, and so the illegal casinos were closed.  The Vapors continued on as a nightclub and restaurant, and limped through the disco era into the 1990’s, but the glory days of Hot Springs as a mecca for gamblers, gangsters and baseball players was long gone.  The club closed and the building that was so “Modern” in 1960 was sold in October 1998.  The Tower of Strength Ministries moved in and held church services for years in the building, on the highway leading into the town.  The iconic sign remained, proclaiming the current occupant.  

In 2020, the club re-opened as a performance venue, the Legendary Vaporshttps://www.thelegendaryvapors.com/, but has been temporarily closed due to the coronavirus outbreak.  The building is a survivor.  Let's hope it can weather the storm. 

And the budding 15 year old musician who was peering in the windows that night?  

His musical career did not really take off, but his political career certainly did.  He had a 12 year run as Governor of Arkansas, and then another 8 years as President of the United States.  William Jefferson Clinton grew up in Hot Springs and told Tony Bennett that though he was too young to enter the nightclub that night, he was there, outside at the window, listening in. 

On becoming a writer ...

The path to this Blog starts with a doctor from Lankenau Hospital sticking a tube into my artery at my right wrist, and fishing two expandable stents into my heart to open up the 100% closed proximal left anterior descending coronary artery of my heart. That artery is also known as the widow maker - and a 100% blockage usually accomplishes that task. But I've been a runner all of my life. So while this blockage was building and cutting off blood flow, when I ran, my body began doing a work-around, and found alternative ways to get blood bypassing this blockage. And so, my body had time to warn me that things needed some inspection - rather than simply announcing itself one day with a massive heart attack. Running saved my life.

And so I decided to celebrate - the extension of my life, and the new hardware, and the increased blood flow, by traveling with my lovely wife, Barb, and visiting boyood friend Jay and Dorothy in New Hampshire for a long weekend of cross country skiing. We had visited with he and his wife years before - our first time traveling together when we were first dating. On both visits, we had a wonderful time visiting with a friend I had known since kindergarten. We skied, snow-shoed, and then had apres ski wine and treats around the wood stove in their 1810 Shaker farmhouse. And on the second trip, we filled them in on the adventures we had been having together in the seven years since we had last visited.

Barb and I have been to 45 of the 50 states [now all 50 as of 2018! Ed.]. We both had been to about 25 or so when we met - and then in traveling together started to acquire more states, and then decided it was a noble goal to visit all 50 states. So we began aiming in that direction - and have gone on spring break to Mississippi, Alabama, Indiana, while others are going to Florida and Mexico. It has been a wonderful adventure.

By our rules, simply landing at an airport and laying over at a place is not enough. We only count the state if we stay overnight at least a night; or drive through a large portion of it and have a meal in it. Your mileage may vary. I don't think there is a national standard for the "Visit Each of the 50 States" club. So we go with our home made rules.

So as we sat around the wood stove and swapped stories, We told Jay and Dorothy about our travels since we had seen them. I am a big history buff, so wherever we go, I have researched the significant events of history that happened there; I always make a note of any cemeteries with the graves of the famous; and my ears perk up when we are at any location and I hear about other events of history, large and small, that happened in that particular place. And we invariably go and check them out. And now with a google search, you can always find "the rest of the story" if you wish.

When I talk about our travels, telling our travel stories, I get all worked up. People who don' like travel or history probably feel captive by these conversation, and seek to end it. Jay and Dorothy are interested, and so we told them about the little things we had discovered - the chapel where Joan of Arc prayed before her execution - now in Milwaukee; a witness telling of Franklin Roosevelt clanking down the aisle of his church, his legs crippled by polio; the last bank robbed by the James Gang, the second story balcony on President Garfield's grave where you can view the lake; the place where Major John Andre was hung for conspiring with Benedict Arnold to betray West Point - now the center point of a housing development; the club where Tony Bennett sang "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" for the very first time - while a young Bill Clinton listened outside; the table in a B&B where David Greenglass wrote down atomic weapons secrets and passed them along to the Rosenbergs. And on and on.

Jay listened with interest, and finally said "You should write these things down. Would you want to write an article for Southwest Airlines in-flight magazine?"

I have been journaling since junior high. Writing comes naturally and easy to me. I have considered myself a "writer" forever - with lots of potential locked inside. But other than a valiant attempt at songwriting during a blissful period of unemployment, I have never really tried to write for publication. I have done local writing for local causes - my historical society, my community newsletter. And suddenly Jay was asking me if I was ready for the big leagues - writing for a magazine with national exposure. I told him that I'd love to try.

I went home and over the next several months I jotted down short versions of each of these stories, what Jay called "slivers of history". I sent them off to him, to see what he wanted to use. He suggested a compilation - using several of them with artwork to illustrate the stories. I was both enthusiastic and disappointed. Enthusiastic that I was forced to write and might some day see my work published in a national magazine with a large audience. And disappointed in the approach - I had spun the idea in my head into a grander scheme, where each month Southwest would send me to a new destination where I would work on digging out the local slivers of history. How cool would that be? Turns out, I'll never know.

But the project went on, and the article was polished into final form in the February 2013 edition of Spirit magazine (see that blog entry). There is some of me in the article, but mostly Jay. He has been doing this for a long time and knows what he wants, and so his fingerprints are all over over the final piece. But my name is on it as well, and he wrote a thoughtful note in that issue, explaining how it came about. I received a nice check in the mail - the first (and so far only) time I had been paid for my writing. But the most important consequence of writing that first published piece was that it turned me from a "wannabe" into a writer. I had written, and re-written, and experienced the slings and arrows of being edited, and then had been published. And paid! Friends from around the country let me know that they had read and enjoyed the article. That gave me confidence to write again, and I took on a monthly local history article for a neighborhood magazine, and another one for my community, and then the newsletter editor's job for my historical society.

Today, with hundreds of articles under my byline, I can say without too much self-consciousness that I am a "writer". As with my piano playing, I say that I've had a lousy teacher - as in both writing and piano I am self taught. But the writing brings me joy, if not treasure. I disappear for hours at a time into my research. I am always anxious to publish, and so I don't spend as much time as I should with re-writing and editing and polishing. When I post up longer notes on Facebook, I find myself doing my best re-writing then - and so I change the article that I have already published as I think of ways to improve each one. I see the value in it, but writing for deadlines does not give you that same luxury - once you see it in print, it is too late to improve it.

I am still going to an office every day and "working" at the thing that sends money my way. But I am looking forward to retirement, and continuing to use my research and writing skills - to share with others, but mainly for my own benefit. When I complete an article, I read and re-read it, with the joy of being the creator. It is not "War and Peace". I don't aspire to the heights of the writing gods. I don't have that talent level, but instead a modest gift. And, as in this mornings efforts, I am too often in a hurry to get on with the next task in life, and so need to close.

I actually wrote the third blog entry, on Christ Church, this morning. It was a Facebook effort, but then I remembered that I had started this blog with good intentions years ago, as another outlet for my writing efforts. So I came here, and found this entry - half written. I am not sure where I was going with it then, but as with the Christ Church steeple, I found that it needed work and so have now renovated the posting and am sending it off into the world. Maybe someday, some other "wannabe" will find it and be inspired to take on an actual writing task, and see it published in some way, and be encouraged and emboldened to take on another one. My interaction with my old friend Jay set my particular stack of dominoes in motion, and I am grateful for that. May each of you who feel that urge to write find your own mentor, your first opportunity, and follow the path where it leads you. And along the way, find out that you are a "writer". Welcome to the Club!

Family Visit at Philadelphia's Christ Church

What was the tallest building in the United States from 1754 to 1810? Hint: its congregation included 15 signers of the Declaration of Independence (including George Washington, seen in the print to the left arriving at the church one Sunday). Another congregant designed the first American flag. Its minister was the chaplain for the Continental Congress. It’s adjacent churchyard and nearby burial ground are the final resting place for seven of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the largest number at one site.

The answer is Christ Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was reminded of that by a nice feature on the Church in the Winter edition of “Preservation”, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Church is still an active church – as active as one can be in the times of Coronavirus. It is currently restoring the majestic steeple that made it the tallest building in the colonies for more than 50 years, until those hyper-competitive Bostonians put a taller steeple (by 17 feet) on their Park Street Church in 1810.

According to the article, Christ Church’s current baptismal font was the same one where Pennsylvania’s founder, William Penn, was baptized in London. The font, a “massive walnut octagonal baptismal font”, dates back to medieval times, and in the weasel words used by writers on history when they have no proof of the answer, “is thought by some to be the oldest object in America continually used for the same purpose”. “Thought by some”!

William Penn was a Quaker – and they don’t baptize - so why was he baptized in an Anglican church? Penn was born into English society: his father was an admiral in the Royal Navy, and a friend of King Charles II. William Jr. was baptized in All Hallows-by-the-Tower, one of the oldest churches in London, in 1644. Penn was later attracted to the Quaker movement as a young man, and like many of them he was jailed for his beliefs, and suffered a falling out with his father for this reason. After his father’s death, Penn had a vision of a better world, one of religious tolerance for all. King Charles owed Penn’s father a large sum of money, and Penn as the heir suggested that rather than paying the debt in cash, the King give him land in the new world. The King agreed, provided that the new land was named after Penn’s father, and so “Penn’s Sylvania” came into being, named not for William, but for his father.

Meanwhile, All Hollows Church in London had commissioned a new baptismal font, and an artist named Grinling Gibbons had carved “what is regarded as” (weasel weasel) one of the finest pieces of carving in London [definitely worth a click-through. Ed.]. When it was installed in 1682, their “old” font became surplus. What to do with it? Why not ship it off to Penn’s Sylvania, as a reminder to William Penn of his roots? The Preservation article notes that this was done perhaps as a gibe at Penn – taunting him with his Anglican roots.

I spent an hour or so looking for more specifics here but could not find more than the basic line that was repeated throughout the last 100 years or so – that the font was sent to Philadelphia in 1697. Penn was alive then, but was not living in Pennsylvania. The current Christ Church was not built until 50 years later. However, there was an earlier incarnation – apparently even some Church of England adherents had left England for the New World, and when they arrived in Philadelphia, they built a small wooden Anglican church on the site of the current location in 1696. So that timing works for the arrival of the font the next year. As the congregation grew, they erected a new brick church between 1727 and 1744, topped by the current steeple in 1754.

My 5th great grandfather, Theodorus Hall, was married in Christ Church on April 29, 1729. His family lived in Tacony, and were some of the founders of Trinity Church Oxford, about ten miles away from Christ Church. Why was he not married in his home church? I am guessing that Christ Church was the home church of his bride, Gartrey Goodwin. Her line is one of those dead ends that you sometimes come to with genealogy research, so I know little about her, other than that she was the mother of ten children in her life and lived to age 95. To live to that age, and to raise that large a brood in those times, meant you were one tough cookie.

Theodorus’ older sister, Susannah, was also married at Christ Church on May 2, 1733, to Joseph Harvey Jr. Sadly, Joseph died in 1736, leaving Susannah a widow with a young daughter. She later remarried to John Harvey Rush, also a widower with a young daughter. Their union produced six children, and a middle child, Benjamin, went on to study medicine and in the course of human events also signed the Declaration of Independence. He is one of the more accomplished founding fathers, Dr. Benjamin Rush.

Susannah was another tough cookie in the family tree. Her second husband died in 1751 leaving her, at age 34, with seven children to raise, ranging from an infant to her 16 year old daughter by her first marriage. What to do? “Under the sign of the Blazing Star, Mrs. Rush opened a shop above Second Street, opposite the immense colonnaded market shed that stretched the length of two city squares down the center of High Street [now Market Street. Ed.]. Here she sold groceries and liquor – “it was somewhat like a country store” according to one of her grandsons.” Son Benjamin noted “Her industry and uncommon talents and address in doing business commanded success so that she was enabled not only to educate her children agreeably to her wishes, but to save money.”

Susannah died at Benjamin’s home, at age 78, on July 2, 1795. He wrote of her, “Her company was at all times delightful … and as a mother she had no superior in kindness, generosity and attention to the morals and religious principles of her children.” He called her “an uncommon woman”. She was buried in the cemetery of Christ Church. Her son, Dr. Rush, joined her there in 1813. Their gravestone is still there, and was still legible a few years ago when I last visited. Since then, a storm had brought down a large branch from an old tree overhead, doing some damage to the stone. I sent off some money to contribute to needed repairs. This morning’s topic is my reminder that I need to go back and see how it fared.

My pile of reading material includes about 20 magazines. I pulled out the issue of Preservation last night to make a dent in the pile. And that led me on my odyssey this morning to find out more about the Church, and recall my family connections there. Now, three hours later, I have not read any of the other magazines. But I have had a wonderful visit this morning with Grandpa Theodorus, Grandma Gartrey, Aunt Susannah, and cousin Benjamin. I’ve learned some new things along the way. And with Facebook as an outlet, I have been able to share it with you, the folks who have read this far into this note. Thank you for staying with me on my ramble. But now is the time, as they say at the end of the service at Christ Church, to “go in peace”.

PS: If you care to join Christ Church for online worship tomorrow, or perhaps be part of the effort to restore this significant part of local and American history with your donation, go here: https://www.christchurchphila.org/steeple/.