June 27: William Pepperrell, 1st Baronet of America

He was relatively uneducated, but brilliant; a merchant and a soldier; was a colonial leader as well as the “Hero of Louisberg”; and was the first native-born baronet in colonial America.

William Pepperrell was born on June 27, 1696 in Kittery – which is today in Maine, but during the colonial era was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His father, William Pepperrell, was an English settler who began his career in the colonies as a fisherman’s apprentice, and would advance to a shipbuilder and fishing boat owner. His father had married well, for Margery Bray was the daughter of a well-to-do Kittery merchant. Young Pepperrell was the sixth of seven children.

Young Pepperrell studied surveying and navigation, and later joined his father in the shipbuilding business where he worked in the counting house. He was seventeen when his older brother died, and he had to assume much of the responsibility of the family business. By 1730 Mssrs. Wm. Pepperrells was largely managed by young Pepperrell.

He expanded his father’s business with energy and vigor, creating one of the most prosperous mercantile houses in New England. By 1730 Pepperrell’s firm was managing 30 to 35 vessels which – for the most part – shuttled back and forth from Newfoundland to Virginia and Maryland, and as far as the sugar islands in the Caribbean. They also crossed the Atlantic to Portugal, Spain, and England.

His company ships carried products native to the region - lumber, fish - and brought back sugar, textiles, and other marketable commodities. With the profits Pepperrell purchased land in New England as well as investing in property and business interests in England.

In New England, shipping was a source of wealth but land-ownership represented gentility and status. This new status brought with it the communal responsibility of public office and military command. The Pepperrell’s were one of the nine families in Kittery that had the wealth and status deemed necessary to hold public office – and these political offices were often rotated between the families, being passed down from father to son.

By 1720 – at the age of twenty-four – young Pepperrell represented Kittery in the provincial assembly. In 1725 he became a judge on the York County court, and within five years became the chief justice. By 1727 he was appointed to the Massachusetts Council board – the legislative body of the colony.

Another public responsibility was service in the militia. By the time he was twenty-one Pepperrell was elected as captain of the local militia, then major, lieutenant-colonel, and at the age of thirty was a colonel of the York County militia –the latter position having been held by his father, passing to young Pepperrell as part of the estate. As colonel, he was in command of the entire region from the Piscataqua River to the Canadian border.

Pepperrell married well, being wed on March 16, 1724 to Mary Hirst. Hirst was the daughter of Grove Hirst and Elizabeth Sewell of Boston, and was the granddaughter of the famous colonial judge Samuel Sewell. The couple had four children – 3 girls and a boy – but only the eldest daughter, Elizabeth, would survive the couple. Pepperrell would adopt his grandson, William Pepperrell Sparhawk, as his heir in order to pass on a hereditary title.

The frontiers were relatively peaceful until the spring of 1744. Pepperrell was warned in late 1743 that relations between France and England were close to the breaking point, and to warn and secure the frontier settlements in his jurisdiction against any sudden assault by the French Candadians. On May 12, 1744, word reached Boston of a declaration of war on England by the French, and soon after the French became active against the English New England colonies. The war became known as King George’s War, and was part of the War of Austrian Succession. Increased naval pressure and a series of attacks by the French and their Indian allies convinced the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, William Shirley, that the defense of New England required the reduction of the French stronghold at Louisbourg.

Pepperrell was the logical choice to command the forces. He had been among the early advocates of an attack on Louisb0urg – though these advocates envisioned it as a largely English affair, with minor colonial support. He was also familiar, thanks to his tenure as colonel, with the frontier. He also was respected by the citizenry that made up the militia, and maintained a respectable standard of discipline. He also knew many of the Royal Navy officers – men responsible for transporting and supporting his army.

Governor Shirley proposed a colonial undertaking, with limited English support – and provided a plan for the assault. Pepperrell agreed and was an influential supporter of the idea in the political environment of Massachusetts.

Pepperrell set sail on March 24, 1745, from Boston. Arriving at the British outpost of Canso, Nova Scotia, on April 4, the Massachusetts militia was joined by militias from New Hampshire and Connecticut, and by a naval squadron from the West Indies. It is estimated that Pepperrell had up to 4,300 men under his command – although the effective strength at any one time would amount to around 2,100.

By April 30, the force arrived at Louisburg. Pepperrell, realizing that Shirley’s original (based on surprise) would not work, opted to commence a formal siege. However, the New Englanders surprised the French by – instead of stopping to dig defensive trenches right away – hauling their heavy cannon during the night of their arrival through a marsh the French considered impassable, and then occupying a key French defensive position that had been abandoned. By the second morning of the landing, Pepperrell’s cannon were firing into Louisburg from this position.

The siege lasted seven weeks, but in the end the French asked for surrender terms. On June 17, 1745, the French officially capitulated.

The surrender of the French stronghold brought fame and honor to Pepperrell. King George II commissioned him as colonel in command of a regular army regiment – the 66^th Regiment of Foot – and he received a baronetcy. He was now “Sir” William Pepperrell.

Pepperrell would, as many colonists, be bitter at the 1748 return of Louisburg to the French in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, but he would live to see it recaptured in another war with France in 1758 – this time by a British-led force under the command of General James Wolfe.

In 1755 Pepperrell was promoted to Major General, and in 1759 became the only native-born American to receive a commission as lieutenant-general in the British army – honoring the Lion of Louisburg. Pepperrell passed away on July 6, 1759 – recognized by his generation as the foremost military figure in the colonies.

Web Resources:

1911 Encyclopedia

Dictionary of Canadian Biography

The Great Fortress (Gutenberg Project)

The Life of Sir William Pepperrell (Googlebooks)

Massachusetts Historical Society

Nova Scotia’s Electric Scrapbook

Nova Scotian Biographies

Sir William Pepperrell by Nathanial Hawthorne

Wikipedia

Photo Resources:

Portrait of Pepperrell by John Smibert, 1746 (Wikipedia)

1670 map of New England (Wikipedia)

Landing troops at Louisburg (Wikipedia)

¾ view portrait of William Pepperrell (black and white), 1747, Library of Congress LC-USZ62-75604, Nova Scotian Biographies

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July 14: Dr. Florence Bascom, Rock Star

The late nineteenth century was an exciting time for women in the United States as they saw their opportunities for professional careers expanding further than they ever had before in this nation. One of those women became among first to earn a PhD in Geology (the second woman to do so); the first woman geologist hired by the U.S. Geological Survey; as well as the first woman elected to the Council of the Geological Society of America. However, none of these significant ‘firsts’ in women’s history occurred with out struggle, persistence, and dedication.

Florence Bascom was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts on July 14, 1862. She would be the last of six children. Her parents were John and Emma Curtis Bascom. John Bascom was a professor of oratory and rhetoric at Williams College, and in 1874 he became the president of the University of Wisconsin – a post he held until 1887. He and his wife actively supported the temperance and suffrage movements and he advocated coeducation. A year after he became president of the University of Wisconsin that school opened its doors to women students – a radical and progressive move for the era. Florence’s mother was a suffragist as well as a school teacher. The progressive attitudes of her parents encouraged Bascom to not fear any challenge to attain what she desired.

While not much is known of Bascom’s early education, she did graduate at the age of fifteen from high school in Madison, Wisconsin. Immediately after her high school graduation in 1877 Florence Bascom enrolled at the University of Wisconsin. While admitted to the university, women were limited in what they could do. For instance, they had limited access to the library and the gymnasium. Women were not allowed to be in classrooms that were filled with men. But, she listened, took notes, and read widely – graduating by the time she was twenty with two Bachelor’s degrees in 1882 - and adding a Bachelor of Science degree in 1884. She went on to graduate school, earning her Master’s degree in Geology in 1887.

Bascom applied to John Hopkins University for admission to the Geology Department in September 1890 – and seven months later she was given permission to take graduate classes at John Hopkins University – even though John Hopkins had not officially opened its doors for women to earn a degree. An executive committee voted to allow Bascom to attend classes without being officially enrolled. In 1892 she formally applied to enter the doctoral program, and was be accepted secretly into the program.

While at John Hopkins she had to sit, isolated, behind a screen that blocked her view of the men, the teacher, and the blackboard. Why? The reason was simple in the perspective of the male-dominated school: she was isolated in order not to “disrupt” male students who were not used to seeing a female student, especially in graduate courses. This isolation continued in the field studies – which women were not encouraged to attend, but Bascom did. Since she could not accompany the class, she would travel with her mentor, Professor George Williams, to conduct studies on rock formations and structures in Pennsylvania and Maryland. The end result of her experience was a doctoral dissertation that was classified as ‘brilliant’, and put her in the foremost rank of young, budding geologists. In 1893 Bascom became the first woman to earn a PhD at John Hopkins University.

Bascom’s interest in geology was due to a driving tour she made with her father and a geology professor at Ohio State, Edward Orton. Orton was an early supporter of allowing women to study the science of geology. This early interest led to her studying geology at the University of Wisconsin and making it her career.

From 1893 to 1895 Bascom would work as an instructor at Ohio State University. Then her big break came in 1895 when M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr College, invited Bascom to establish a Department of Geology for women in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Since geology was not yet considered important enough for its own building, she worked at first in a storage space that was in a building housing the ‘major’ sciences of biology, chemistry, and physics. She spent the next two years gathering the resources she would need to educate a new generation of women in the field of geology – collections of mineral, rock, and fossils. She would achieve full professorship at Bryn Mawr in 1906, where she not only created the undergraduate Geology course, but a national recognized graduate course in geology as well.

A number of students would come under Bascom’s influence during her teaching career, and would later become university instructors, work on state and federal geologic surveys, and serve in the Military Geology Unit in World War II. Bascom was described as rigorous, incisive, and consistent. She was also proud of her students, writing to Professor Herman Fairchild in 1931:

“I have always claimed that there was no merit in being the only one of a kind… I have considerable pride in the fact that some of the best work done in geology today by omen, ranking with that done by men, has been done by my students…. These are all notable young women and will be a credit to the science of geology.”

In 1896 Bascom became the first woman geologist employed by the U.S. Geological Survey. She would combine her teaching position at Bryn Mawr College with field studies on the eastern seaboard for the Geological Survey where her work on mapping crystalline rock formations became the basis of many later studies. In 1906 the first edition of American Men and Women of Science listed her as a four-starred geologist – which placed her among the nation’s hundred leading geologists. Her accomplishments were described in the Geological Society of America's magazine, GSA Today, July 1997 as follows: "Bascom was the first woman hired by the U.S. Geological Survey (1896), the first woman to present a paper before the Geological Society of Washington (1901), the first woman elected to the Council of the Geological Society of America (elected in 1924; no other woman was elected until after 1945), and the first woman officer of the GSA (vice president in 1930). She was an associate editor of the American Geologist (1896-1905) and a four-starred geologist in the first edition of American Men and Women of Science (1906), which meant that her colleagues regarded her as among the country's hundred leading geologists. After joining the Bryn Mawr College faculty, Bascom founded the college's geology department. This site became the locus of training for the most accomplished female geologists of the early 20th century."

Bascom retired from her professorship at Bryn Mawer in 1928 but continued working for the U.S. Geological Survey, moving to Washington, D.C. in order to prepare her final series of Survey reports. She would retire from the Geological Survey in 1936 at the age of 74.

Bascom passed away from a cerebral hemorrage in the city of her birth, Williamstown, on June 18, 1945, leaving a remembrance, according to former student Eleanora Bliss Knopf writing in American Mineralogist, "to her colleagues, her students, and her friends the inspiring memory of a scholarly and brilliant mind combined with a forceful and vigorous personality." As Ida Ogilvie, one of Bascom’s students who herself became a geology professor, wrote in 1945 about Bascom:

“Probably no one will ever know all the difficulties that she encountered, but little by little she achieved her purpose of making her department one of the best in the country.”

WEB RESOURCES:

Associated Content
Bookrags
Geological Society of America
Memorial to Florence Bascom
Today in Science
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Portrait of Dr. Bascom/Mineralogical Society of America
John Bascom, University of Wisconsin
Emma C. Bascom, University of Wisconsin
Younger Florence Bascom/Wikipedia
Bascom Standing with a Compass/GSA
Bascom at the Grand Canyon/GSA
The elder Dr. Bascom
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June 28: Clara Maass, Heroine the Fight Against Yellow Fever

Clara Louise Maass was born on June 28, 1876 in East Orange, New Jersey. She was the first of ten children, and was the daughter of Robert E. and Hedwig A. Maass, recent German immigrants to the United States.

Maass was kept busy during her childhood years, attending public school and accepting the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings. As she reached her adolescent years she became a “mother’s helper” to another family. A mother’s helper was employed help care for the house and children. In return for her work in the home, she was rewarded with room and board, and given time to attend school.

She completed three years of school at East Orange High School before leaving school at the age of fifteen to work at the Newark Orphan Asylum for $10 a month. This local orphanage accepted orphans from age two to ten. Maass would send half of her monthly wages home to help her family. She was compassionate and caring for her charges, striving to help them emotionally and physically.

Many women were entering the nursing profession in the late 19th century, following the footsteps of early woman professional nurses, Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton. They were symbols of compassionate womanhood and served as a guiding light to those who followed them. Both were legends and still alive in the 1890s – and were an inspiration to Maass..

Even though the minimum age for training to become a nurse was supposed to be twenty, Maass was only seventeen years old when she entered the recently created Christina Trefz Training School of Nurses in 1893. A nursing program had been institute in 1892 when two Red Cross nurses from Germany were recruited as teachers. Mrs.Christina Trefz, the wife of a local brewer, purchased lots and built Trefz Hall, which was designated as the “The School of Nursing”. The school was dedicated on November 30, 1893. The school was operated by the German Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, and was only the fourth such nursing school at that time in New Jersey – and the first in Newark. She would graduate among the first students to complete the course of study in 1895 after two years of intensive training, and went to work as a duty nurse at the German Hospital. In 1898 she was named as the head nurse of the institution, and was known as a hard worker and a person dedicated to the nursing profession. She was only twenty-one years old.

In 1898 the Spanish American War began. There was no Army Nurses Corps in existence at the time, so Maass volunteered as a contract nurse for the Army on October 1, 1898. She would serve in field hospitals with the Seventh Army Corps in several locations during the war – Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and finally Santiago, Cuba. More soldiers would become ill or would die from disease during the Spanish American War than were wounded – and it was Maass’s job, along with the other contract nurses, to care for them. She dealt with malaria, typhoid fever, and dysentery until she was discharged from Army service on February 5, 1899.

In November 1899 Maass again responded to a call for contract nurses and was sent to the Philippines – newly freed from Spanish control during the war and now a part of a new fledgling American empire. There she served as a nurse with the Eighth U.S. Army Corps. As the Philippine Insurrection against American control grew, more American troops had to be sent to the region – and again faced the deadly danger of disease. While in the Philippines she cared for soldiers suffering from smallpox, typhoid, and yellow fever.

Maass had to leave the Philippines before the end of her contract – not because she contracted yellow fever, but because she contracted another tropical disease, dengue fever. She was shipped back to the United States to recover in May 1900. She would soon be attracted to work again in Cuba.

Yellow fever had become a huge problem with the American troops occupying Cuba. Dr. Gorgas, who held the post in Cuba of Havana Sanitary Officer, originally thought that yellow fever was spread through unsanitary conditions, and conducted a city-wide sanitation effort – which failed to stem the spread of yellow fever. The disease became so rampant that the U.S. Surgeon General organized the Yellow Fever Commission – chaired by Dr. Walter Reed - to investigate how the disease was spread. Their findings revealed that the disease was spread through the bite of the female Stegomyia mosquito which, after taking blood from an infected person, would infect others by biting them as well. Gorgas was given the task of clearing the mosquitoes out of Havana. However, he pursued a different line of approach: developing an injection to prevent the disease from occurring.

In the fall of 1900 Gorgas sent out a call for volunteer nurses to help deal with yellow fever cases. Maass was well aware of the symptoms and suffering that went with this dreaded disease. Having seen the effects of the disease first-hand in the Philippines, Maass had developed a special interest in yellow fever, and a special desire to see the disease eradicated.

In October 1900 she had sufficiently recovered from the effects of her case of dengue fever that she could volunteer to serve in Cuba. Because the quality of her work with yellow fever victims in the Philippines, Maass was accepted as a nurse with the Yellow Fever Commission. After she arrived in Cuba she saw – and was hopeful of – the experiments being conducted to develop the medicine necessary to stop the disease. In 1901 she volunteered to be a part of a plan to develop immunization serum by allowing the volunteers to be bitten by infected mosquitoes, have a mild form of yellow fever, which would then create immunity for the volunteer. While the volunteers were told that they might die in the course of the experiment, they were offered an incentive of $100 for being subjects of the test. $100 was a considerable sum in 1900 dollars. An additional $100 was paid if the volunteer became ill.

In March 1901 Maass submitted to being bitten by infected mosquitoes, and developed a mild case of yellow fever. However, though the scientists and doctors involved were convinced that the mosquito was the primary means of transmitting the disease, there was still some doubt. Not all of the subjects who had been bitten by the infected mosquitoes developed yellow fever.

On August 14, 1901, Maass again submitted to being bitten by infected mosquitoes. The doctors hoped that her earlier mild case of yellow fever would immunize her against the disease. Unfortunately, they were soon to be disillusioned in their hopes.

Maass became severely ill with yellow fever on August 18th. She would die from the disease that had no cure on August 24th at the age of twenty-five. She was buried with military honors in Colon Cemetery, Havana, and in 1902 her remains would be reinterred at Fairmount Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey.

While a number of the test volunteers did die as a result of the experiments, Maass was the only American, the only woman, and the only nurse to succumb to the disease. A public outcry soon put an end to human experiments.

Clara Maass and her heroic sacrifice might have remained as a little known sidelight of history except for Leopoldine Guinther. Guinther, who was a superintendent of Newark Memorial Hospital and a fighter in the war against yellow fever, saw a portrait of Maass and felt the need to be an advocate of recognition of her sacrifice. Through her efforts Maass’ original gravestone was replaced with a pink granite gravestone with a bronze plaque. In addition, the Newark German Hospital would be renamed the Clara Maass Hospital in 1952 to honor its former graduate. Finally, in 1976 a stamp would be issued honoring her, with the words “She gave her life” at the bottom. Clara Maass would be recognized and remembered for the heroine she was.

WEB RESOURCES:

American Association for the History of Nursing
Clara Maass Medical Center
Find A Grave
Google Books: Past and Promise
Old Newark
St. Matthews
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Photo of Clara Maass, Office of Medical History, U.S. Army
Orphans Asylum, Old Newark Web
German Hospital, Old Newark Web
Side view of Clara Maass, Find A Grave
1976 First Day Cover Envelope with Stamp Honoring Clara Maass, American Association for the History of Nursing
Clara Maass gravesite, Find A Grave

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June 22: John Dillinger, Public Enemy #1

John Dillinger, Johnnie Dillinger
The G-Men will chop you down
Some of the things that you've done done
Have been makin' the government frown.
Your numbers up, the words gone round
You won't be goin back to jail
You'll be a bull's eye for the police
And they'll throw the lead like hail.

This first stanza of a song refers to a man that America loved or hated, viewed as a killer or a Robin Hood, and who even today stirs controversy on whether he really died on that night of July 28, 1935, in a hail of bullets that reportedly struck him down in an alley next to the Biograph Theater in Chicago, Illinois.

John Herbert Dillinger, Jr., was born at 2 P.M. on Monday, June 22, 1903, in a middle-class residential neighborhood in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was the younger of two children – his sister, Mildred, was fourteen years his senior – whose parents were John Wilson Dillinger and Mary Ellen “Mollie” Lancaster.

As a child, Dillinger was beset by a litany of social issues that combined to – in the eyes of some – force him into a life of a rebel and criminal. His father earned his living as a grocer and was inconsistent in his application of discipline. His father went from being harsh, repressive, and physical at times to being generous and permissive at other times. Dillinger’s mother, Mary, died when he was three, and he would show resentment and rebellion when his father remarried seven years later. Basically he was raised by his older teenage sister until his father remarried.

His father would have three more children by his second wife, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Fields.

Dillinger often found himself in trouble as an adolescent. He was a bully in school and had his own group of followers when he was ten years old. Impatient, intelligent with no interest in academics, he finally quit school and went to work in a machine shop in Indianapolis. However, Dillinger – who was very intelligent and a good worker – became bored with his job and often stayed out all night. In a desperate attempt to provide a healthier atmosphere for his children, Dillinger’s father sold his property in Indianapolis and moved to a farm near Mooresville, Indiana. Seventeen-year old Dillinger would commute to work in Indianapolis – and never grew to enjoy farm life.

In 1923 Dillinger got into trouble with the law because of auto theft (he was caught by police officers, but escaped before being booked) and did what many young men in his situation did - enlisted in the Navy. After his basic training was complete, he was assigned to the battleship Utah as a Fireman, Third Class – which meant his spent his work shift shoveling coal in the bowels of the ship – and went AWOL when the ship docked in Boston. He returned a day later, was fined and sentenced to the brig by a court marshal, and four months later deserted.

When he returned to Mooresville he claimed that he had received an honorable discharge because of a heart murmur, then wooed and married sixteen-year-old Beryl Ethel Hovious on April 12, 1924. They ultimately settled in Indianapolis, where Dillinger had worked briefly at a variety of jobs. He joined Ed Singleton in a bid for ‘easy money’ and tried to rob a grocer. They were apprehended and Dillinger was sentenced to prison for up to 30 years. Beryl would divorce Dillinger in 1929 – and a month after the divorce Dillinger requested to be transferred from the Indiana State Reformatory to the Indiana State Prison, where he could associate with a

On May 10, 1933, Dillinger was paroled because his step-mother was dying, only to discover that she had died by the time he got home. Although at first his relations with her had been strained, he had grown to respect and love her. After the various emotional upheavals in his life, with the Great Depression at its depths, with little prospect or inclination for steady employment, he began his rise to infamy.

John Dillinger, Johnnie Dillinger
The finger will be laid on you
And the G-Man watchin' with his gun
Is goin to get you too.
When he stops you Johnnie
He's gonna stop you dead
And head you out for the golden gate
Packin a load of lead.

He started a crime spree of robbing several banks in Ohio that lasted from June 10, 1933 until his arrest Sept. 22, 1933. When the authorities searched Dillinger they found plans for what looked like a prison break. While Dillinger denied any knowledge of it, a number of his Indiana State Prison cellmates broke out of prison, shooting two guards with guns that had been previously smuggled in by Dillinger - and using plans very similiar to those found on Dillinger. On October 12, 1933, they arrived at Lima, Ohio, and broke Dillinger out of the county jail, killing Sheriff Jessie Sarber. Dillinger had his “gang”.

The Dillinger gang travelled through Indiana, robbing several banks and plundering two police arsenals – equipping themselves with rifles, Thompson submachine guns, pistols, bulletproof vests, and ammunition. They also killed several police officers in Indiana and Illinois.

Deciding to let things ‘cool off’, they vacationed in Florida, and then travelled to Tucson Arizona. On January 23, 1934 a fire broke out in the hotel the men were staying in while in Tucson – and the police arrested four of the men, including Dillinger, after firemen recognized them from their photographs.

Dillinger was sent to the ‘escape proof’ county jail at Crown Point, Indiana to await trial for robbery and murder. While there Dillinger was interviewed by several reporters who were impressed with his charisma and sense of humor. They added his escapades by relating the mortgages he destroyed while robbing banks, and even contributions his gang made to the poor. He even had his picture taken with prosecutor Robert Estill – a picture that would ruin Estill’s career.

On March 3, 1934, he tricked his guards with a wooden gun he had whittled and painted black with shoe polish. After forcing his guards to open his cell door, he grabbed two Thompson submachine guns, locked up the guards and several trustees, and left the jail. He stole Sheriff Lillian Holley’s car, and crossed the Indiana-Illinois state line as he headed to Chicago.

The act of transporting a stolen vehicle across state lines brought the precursor of the FBI - the United States Bureau of Investigation - into the case.

Dillinger formed a new gang and began robbing banks again, and hide out in Little Bohemia, Wisconsin. By this time Dillinger is front-page news, and locals in the area report an unusually high number of tourists to the United States Bureau of Investigation. United States Bureau of Investigation agents surround the Little Bohemia Lodge, only to discover that Dillinger and five of his gang members fled out of a back window to freedom.

The heat was on. Dillinger now made Chicago his hideout, and on May 27, 1934, had minor plastic surgery to alter his features. He spent several weeks recovering from the surgery in the home of a local bar owner, Jimmy Probasco.

Dillinger was able to celebrate his 31st birthday by reading U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings’ declaration that Dillinger was Public Enemy #1. Dillinger took his current sweetheart, Polly Hamilton, out to dinner. A few days later the Justice Department offered a $10,000 reward the arrest of Dillinger. A week later, on June 30, 1934, Dillinger showed his lack of concern by robbing a bank in South Bend, Indiana.

Back in Chicago, Dillinger moved into an apartment owned by Anna Sage – an illegal immigrant who owned several brothels, and was Polly Hamilton’s landlady. In order to broker a deal to stay in the country, Sage promises to turn over Dillinger to the federal agents.

On July 22, 1934, Dillinger had dinner at Seminary Restaurant, went to a Cubs game, and then took Sage and Hamilton to a movie at the Biograph Theater – which offered an “air-cooled” environment that was especially appealing on a hot summer day in Chicago.

Sage made a quick phone call to the federal agents, telling them of Dillinger’s movie plans. When Dillinger and the two women left the movie theater at 10:30 PM over twenty federal agents were waiting for them.

O Billy the Kid and the Dalton Boys
And others of their kin
Were bad gun
men outside the law
But they were brave gun men within
Now you know the
old time story
How Billy met his end
It's too late to change you now
So long, old friend.

Dillinger sensed the ambush, turned, and fled into an alley. A hail of bullets followed, four hitting him, and one of these entering Dillinger’s neck and exiting through his right eye, instantly killing him.

Three days later the remains of John Dillinger were laid to rest at the Crown Hill Cemetery, Mason County, Indiana. He had come home.

WEB RESOURCES:

Chicago Tribune
FBI
Find A Grave
Google books: John Dillinger
John Dillinger
John Dillinger Museum
Northwestern
Tru Crime Library
Wikipedia

Library of Congress: John Dillinger (song title)

PHOTO SOURCES:

John Dillinger, FBI
Dillinger and Estill, True TV
Dillinger’s Wooden Gun, Examiner
Arrest Warrant for Dillinger, National Archives
Wanted Poster, National Archives
The Biograph Theater, Chicago Tribune
The Dillinger Grave Site, Find A Grave
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June 21: Joseph Rainey, First African American US Congressman

He was born a slave, freed, raised in the South, fled during the Civil War, and became the first black American to be a United States Congressman, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for eight years.

Joseph Hayne Rainey was born a slave in Georgetown, South Carolina on June 21, 1832. His father, Edward, was a barber who shrewdly managed his monies, allowing him to purchase freedom for himself, his wife Gracia, and his children in the 1840s. After buying their freedom, the Rainey’s moved in 1846 to Charleston, South Carolina, where George provided a comfortable living through his skills as a barber by working at one of the top hotels in South Carolina, the Mills Hotel. The Mills Hotel had opened its doors in 1853 and soon achieved a reputation for excellence – and is still in existence today. In an unusual turn of events, George Rainey became prosperous enough by 1860 that he could afford two slaves of his own.

While not much is known about Joseph Rainey’s youth, it is known that he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a barber himself. He did receive limited schooling. In the late-1850s, Rainey moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he met and married Susan – who was originally from the West Indies. They moved back to Charleston in 1859.

Rainey was twenty-eight years old when the American Civil War erupted in April 1861, with the shelling of Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina – where Joseph Rainey lived and worked. Rainey was soon drafted by the Confederate government to work on the network of fortifications around Charleston Harbor. He soon moved from that labor into being a steward on a blockade-runner.

In 1862 Rainey and his wife secretly fled from their home, escaping to Bermuda for the duration of the war on a blockade-runner that traveled from Charleston to Bermuda. They settled for three years in St. George, Bermuda, where they earned a living – Rainey as a barber and his wife as a successful dressmaker. When a yellow fever epidemic struck St. George, the Rainey’s moved to Hamilton where Rainey worked as a barber and a bartender at the Hamilton Hotel.

Rainey and his wife returned to Charleston after the end of the Civil War. He soon became involved in Reconstruction politics.

In 1865 Rainey – accompanied by his older brother Edward – attended the Colored People’s Convention at Zion Presbyterian Church. The church was pastured by a missionary, Jonathan Gibbs, who has started a school for freed Blacks, and was a ten-year veteran of the abolitionist movement. Gibbs had been sent by the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freed-men, and he would annoy white South Carolinians by hosting a convention that advocated rights for the newly freed slaves. As a result, he would be exiled to pastor a church in a more remote South Carolina county. Gibbs soon left South Carolina. Moving to Florida, he began a political career there that would enable him to become that state’s first Black Secretary of State.

The convention sought ways to advance “the interests of our people”, seeking educational benefits, jobs, and political influence. The effect of the convention was felt by Rainey when he became a member of the executive committee of the state Republican Party, and was elected in 1868 to represent Georgetown at the 1868 constitutional convention. That convention wrote a new constitution for South Carolina. During this time Rainey favored a poll tax – if the monies gathered were used for exclusively for public education. He also supported an effort to legalize the collection of debts contracted before the Civil War including debts incurred in the purchase of slaves. Neither of these ideas were approved in the new constitution. However, he successfully supported an amnesty bill which allowed former Confederate soldiers to regain their civil rights.

As a symbol of the growing power of Reconstruction in the South, Rainey was appointed as a brigadier general in the state militia and served as an agent in the State Land Commission. He also attended the 1869 State Labor Convention, which lobbied the General Assembly for pro-labor legislation to protect black workers.

In 1870 Rainey was elected to the state Senate of South Carolina, where he was soon appointed as the chairman of the senate Finance Committee.

Later that year – on December 12, 1870 - he was elected to fill a vacancy that opened in the U.S. House of Representatives when the House refused to seat Benjamin F. Whittemore. Whittemore had been censured by the House for corruption, and was re-elected by the people of South Carolina – after which the House refused to seat him.

Rainey would be re-elected to Congress several times, serving until March 3, 1879. He was the longest-serving Black Congressman until the 1950s when William L. Dawson broke Rainey’s record.

While in Congress during Reconstruction, Rainey consistently supported legislation designed to protect the civil rights of black Americans – especially those living in the post-Civil War South. He advocated passage of the 1872 Ku Klux Klan Act to rid the south of the organization. The act was signed into law by President Grant. Concerning the need for this act, Rainey stated:

“When myself and my colleagues shall leave these Halls and turn our footsteps toward our southern homes, we know not that the assassin may await our coming, as marked for his vengeance.”

He also supported a civil rights bill that was sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, which outlawed racial discrimination on juries, in schools, on transportation, and in public accommodations. The amnesty bill passed in 1874 and the civil rights bill was enacted in 1875. He also was an advocate in Congress for Chinese and American Indian rights.

In May 1874 he would become the first black American to preside as Speaker pro tempore over the House. He also received seats on three standing committees: Freedmen’s Affairs (41st–43rd Congresses), Indian Affairs (43rd Congress), and Invalid Pensions (44th–45th Congresses, 1875–1879).

He would win reelection in 1876 against the Democratic candidate, John Smythe Richardson. Richardson would challenge the results of the election based on the grounds of intimidation of white voters by the federal soldiers and black militia that guarded the voting booths around the state. The challenge was rejected.

But Richardson ran again against Rainey two years later – this time as Reconstruction was coming to a slow and painful ending. This time he won, replacing Rainey in Congress on March 3, 1879. Reconstruction was over, and the whites regained political control of South Carolina.

Rainey returned to his home in Georgetown, South Carolina. He was appointed as an Internal Revenue agent in South Carolina on May 22, 1879, serving until July 15, 1881. Moving back to Washington, D.C., he was involved in banking and a railroad. He retired due to illness in 1886, moving back to Georgetown.

Rainey died in Georgetown on August 1, 1887, at the age of fifty-five. He was buried in the Baptist Cemetery in Georgetown.

He was a unique mixture of compassion and hard-headed reality. A successful businessman, he conducted himself with honor during a time when many in politics were solely seeking personal gain. He would be honored 118 years after his death when a portrait of him was unveiled and displayed in the Capitol in Washington, D.C., becoming the first portrait of a black legislator to be displayed in the Capitol. Perhaps his words, spoken to the Congress, best sums up Rainey’s post-Civil War efforts and beliefs:

“We are earnest in our support of the Government. We were earnest in the house of the nation’s perils and dangers; and now, in our country’s comparative peace and tranquility, we are earnest for our rights.”

WEB RESOURCES:

Bella Online
Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress
Black Americans in Congress
Black Past
Find-A-Grave
News In History
Online 1911 Encyclopedia
South Carolina Department of Archives and History
South Carolina Encyclopedia
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCE:

Photo of Rainey, Library of Congress
Photo of Rainey seated, Library of Congress
Rainey Home, SC Dept. of Archives and History
Portrait as a Congressman, House of Representatives
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