April 3: David Kenney, "Father of the Vacuum Cleaner Industry"

Note: Great Lives is honored to present our first guest blogger, Mary Robinson Sive, who contributed this life story to the Great Lives blog. Mary is the author of Lost villages: historic driving tours in the Catskills as well as other works.

An almost forgotten New Jersey inventor was a pioneer in the vacuum cleaner industry long before this appliance became a standard piece of equipment in most households. Historical accounts often do not give this self-taught and self-made man credit, some dismissing him as a “New Jersey plumber;” others not mentioning him at all. Yet the patents he received between 1903 and 1913 placed him at the center of the American vacuum cleaner industry in the first two decades of the 20th century. In 1910 the New York Times called him the “father of the vacuum cleaner industry.”

The son of Irish immigrants, Kenney at age 15 was apprenticed to a plumber and soon had his own business with offices in New Jersey and New York City. In the 1890s he received patents for a “Flushometer” (to flush toilets) and other plumbing devices that proved quite profitable. Soon he joined the many other inventors who sought to improve housecleaning by mechanical means. By 1902 he installed a steam engine in Pittsburgh that could suck dust out of all parts of a large building.

(Frick Building 1902 installation)
An English engineer, H. Cecil Booth, coined the term “vacuum cleaner” for his truck-mounted invention. He applied for a US patent during the time that Kenney also had several patent applications pending. Kenney received his most significant patent in 1907 after a six-year wait. The Englishman’s application for a US patent was now moot.

According to a 1906 ad Kenney's firm counted the White House and the New York Times building among its customers for stationary central vacuum systems. Two years later it was chosen to install such a system in New York's Singer Building, at the time the world’s tallest office structure, and later provided such service in the US Treasury building.

In a highly competitive environment Kenney was aggressive in pursuing his business interests. He was successful in several lawsuits alleging patent infringement and eventually gave up manufacturing in favor of licensing other companies.

Portable vacuum cleaners came into their own after James Spangler received a patent in 1909 for one powered by electricity and sold it to William Henry Hoover, a name still recognized. But electric power was far from universally available, and a market existed for hand-operated cleaners. Sears Roebuck began offering three versions of such machines the same year.

Anyone living on a farm or in a small town who hoped to clean floors in a modern manner had to use a vacuum cleaner operated by hand. And that vacuum most likely used the nozzle patented by Kenney.

Most of the manual vacuums that survive are of a plunger type (shown in the middle above) that functioned somewhat like a bicycle pump in reverse, with the operator pushing the handle down a tube, then pulling it back up and depositing dust in a container. Other models required operation by two individuals. Sears offered a money-back guarantee on the three models advertised, but within eight years the manually operated cleaners were gone from the catalog and only electric ones were shown. Perhaps word got around that they weren’t really “labor-saving devices.” Women who grew up in farm homes in the 1920s and 1930s remember seeing manual cleaners, but they don’t actually remember their mothers ever using them much.
Manual vacuum cleaners are described in few books dealing with home life or homemaking during the pre-World War I period. Women’s history institutions have no photographs. More examples are found in small local history collections than in major museums. The Hoover Company’s Historical Center in Canton, OH has a number of these appliances, but the largest number is held by a private collector (vachunter.com)

In 1920 1,024,167 vacuum cleaners were sold for a total of $35 million, most undoubtedly electric. The industry for whose growth he was given so much credit by his contemporaries was well-established. Kenney now turned his inventive skills to yet another field and received his last patent in 1920, this for a heating system designed to improve the distribution of heat from a wood-burning fireplace.

The income from his various patents enabled Kenney to pursue other business interests, including real estate transactions beginning early in his career. During the long wait for the 1907 patent Kenney asked the Sisters of Mercy, an order of Catholic nuns who were his daughter’s teachers, to pray for him. His donations beginning in 1905 and continuing to the end of his life totaled over 70 acres and enabled Mt. St. Mary’s College, founded by the order in 1873, to move to a site near his manufacturing operations. He took an active part in the planning of the buildings for the school, which opened in 1908 with elementary and secondary classes and included seven girls in a college department. The school continues as a girls’ prep school with several hundred students. Kenney’s generosity resulted in his being made a Papal Chamberlain by Pope Pius X in 1906. Other civic activities included service on the board of a hospital and of a reform school.

Booth’s name appears in the British Dictionary of National Biography and in biographical reference works dealing with technology. The vacuum cleaners he invented and manufactured are held in London’s Science Museum. Kenney’s name cannot be found in corresponding American reference books, the Library of Congress’ “American Memory” or its Prints and Photographs Collection, nor in the Smithsonian Institution. While the courts uniformly held his patents applicable to portable household cleaners as well as to central installations, the industry largely shifted away from the systems serving entire buildings that he had pioneered in this country. His vacuum cleaner patents survived David Kenney by a few years. He committed suicide in May 1922. His body was found near Beacon, NY, after he had been missing about ten days. He had been in ill health for some years and had recently lost his wife and a sister. He was long forgotten by the 1980s, when the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame was inaugurated with names like Edison and Einstein.

March 24: Rufus King – First Senator from New York

He would sign the new United States Constitution for Massachusetts, be the first U.S. Senator from New York, twice be a candidate for Vice President - and once for President. His views on slavery preceeded the Civil War by half a century, and he was our Ambassador to Great Britain during a time of great contention between the two sovereign nations.

Rufus King was born on March 24, 1755, at Scarboro, Massachusetts. After Maine achieved statehood in 1820, King’s hometown became Scarborough, Maine. He was the eldest son. His parents were Richard King and Sabilla Blagden King, and his father was a prosperous farmer-merchant. His father – who had fought in the French and Indian War in the successful assault on the French Fortress at Louisbourg, Canada, was a staunch Loyalist. He supported the unpopular Stamp Act – and had his home ransacked by local Sons of Liberty in 1766. In 1774 a force of local militia visited the King home, demanding the elder King recant publically his support for the Crown. The elder King died soon after, and his death instilled in his son a true passion for law and order – and a society controlled by rational men.

He received an elementary education at local schools, and at the age of 12 received a classical education at Dummer Academy in South Byfield, Massachusetts. In 1777 he would graduate from Harvard.

During the American Revolution, King would serve briefly in the Massachusetts militia as an aide to Brigadier General John Glover – whose Massachusetts “Marbleheaders” had ferried Washington and his troops across the Delaware to the Battle of Trenton two years earlier. King would serve as a Major in the militia, and participated in the siege of Newport, Rhode Island.

While his military career was short-lived, it did broaden King’s political horizons. Instead of viewing the war and the world from simply a New England perspective, his view was now more encompassing and national in outlook. It also illustrated to King the need for a strong central government that could protect interstate commerce to help the nation grow.

After his experiences in the military, he decided to pursue a legal career – studying under noted lawyer and legal philosopher, Theophilus Parsons – and entered the legal practice in 1780 in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

King had an oratorical gift, and a personal presence and bearing that soon led him into a political career. He was a member of the Massachusetts legislature from 1783 to 1785, and was sent to the Continental Congress from 1784 to 1786. He gained a reputation in the Continental Congress both as a brilliant speaker and an early opponent of the institution of slavery.

He married Mary Alsop, the daughter of a wealthy New York merchant, on March 30, 1786 during the close of his tour in the Continental Congress. She was described at the time as a great beauty, and between her appearance and her father’s prestige, she found herself a much sought-after lady of society.

“her face was oval, with finely formed nose, mouth, and chin, blue eyes, a clear brunette complexion, black hair, and fine teeth. Her movements were at once graceful and gracious, and her voice musical”

King performed his final duties to his home state of Massachusetts by representing her at the Constitutional Convention. King was – at the age of 32 – one of the youngest of the delegates at the Philadelphia Convention – but was also one of the most capable orators there. He attended every session, and became – along with James Madison – one of the leading figures in promoting a true national concept of government. He took numerous notes during the proceedings – which have been studied and analyzed by historians since then.

After these duties were discharged in 1789, he moved permanently to New York to pursue his legal and political career.

In New York he was elected to the state legislature in 1789 and, just prior to the opening of the state’s legislative session, was appointed to the U.S. Senate as one of New York’s first Senators. King represented New York as a U.S. Senator for two terms.

During that time he was one of the Senate’s Federalist leaders and demonstrated a keen and insightful understanding of military issues. He became one of the key proponents for the permanent establishment of a U.S. Navy. He also supported Alexander Hamilton’s fiscal program, as well as being a strong proponent of the unpopular Jay’s Treaty. In 1791 he also became one of the directors of the First Bank of the United States.

King declined President Washington’s offer of a Cabinet post, but after his reappointment as Senator in 1796 did accept the offer to become the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. He would hold this position during the administration of three Presidents, and was a key figure in Britain during a difficult time of relationships between the two countries. He was instrumental in negotiating a settlement of Revolutionary War issues with the British, as well as initiating discussions on European interests in Latin America that would ultimately be expressed in the Monroe Doctrine.

King returned to the United States in 1803 – returning to his career in politics. In 1804 and 1808 he was the Federalist Vice Presidential candidate – with fellow Constitution signer Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as the Presidential candidate. He was defeated. He would run as the Federalist candidate for President in 1816 – losing to another signer of the Constitution, James Madison.

In 1805 he purchased a farm on Long Island and built a home there known as King Manor, which is a museum today. He enjoyed the peace – as well as the occasional political discussions with guests invited to dinner – during his years out of political office.

He was reappointed to the U.S. Senate by New York, where he served from 1813 – 1825. An early critic of the War of 1812, he changed his view after the British burned Washington, D.C. in 1814, because he became convinced that the U.S. was fighting a defensive war. He lent his considerable support to the war effort during the final part of the conflict.

In 1820 King expressed his views on slavery by denouncing the Missouri Compromise. In 1817 he had voted to end the slave trade. Now, three years later, he believed that there should be no compromise on the issue of slavery, but that the issue must be settled immediately and forever by the establishment of a system of compensated emancipation and resettlement of the former slaves in a colony in Africa.

King retired from the Senate n 1825 because of ill health. However, his country called on his services again in the form of President John Quincy Adams, who persuaded him to once again be the U.S. Minister to Great Britain. However, illness forced him to resign from that task a year later, and on , 1827, he died at the age of 72.

He was buried near his beloved King Manor in the cemetery of Grace Episcopal Church, Jamaica, Long Island, New York.


King was a realist, and therefore willing to change his views when the practical outweighed the philosophical. His changing view from sectional to national politics; increased power of a central government; and his dealing with Great Britain allowed him to serve his country faithfully, honorably and well.

WEB RESOURCES:

Colonial Hall
National Archives: America’s Founding Fathers
National Park Service
Soldier-Statesmen of the Constitution
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Oil Portrait of Rufus King by Charles Wilson Peale: Soldier-Statesmen of the Constitution
Portrait of Mary Alsop King: Women of the Republican Court
Portrait of King: Public Domain blog
King Manor: King Manor Museum
Rufus King grave: Find A Grave
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March 2: Susanna Salter, First Woman Mayor

Susanna Madora Kinsey (nee Salter) was born on March 2, 1860, in near Lamira, Ohio. Her parents were Oliver Kinsey and Terissa Ann White Kinsey, whose Quakers ancestors were colonists in William Penn’s colony.

In 1872, when she was 12, her family moved to an 80-acre farm near Silver Lake in northeastern Kansas, where Salter attended public schools. Then, in 1880, she entered the Kansas State Agricultural College as a sophomore, being able to skip her freshman year because of college-level courses she took while in high school. She was forced to drop out of college just six weeks prior to graduate because of an illness.

While at college she met – and married – Lewis Allison Salter, the son of a former Kansas Lt. Governor, Melville J. Salter. Lewis graduated from college in 1879, and the couple were married on September 1, 1880. Two years later, after the birth of the first of their nine children, the Salter’s moved to Argonia, where Lewis would manage a hardware store. Argonia is in southern Kansas, and would be a city where Susanna would be involved in making history.

The first child born in Argonia was the Salter’s’ second child, Francis Argonia Salter, who was born in the spring of 1883. In 1884, Mrs. Salter’s parents moved to Argonia, where they bought the store in a partnership with Lewis so that Lewis could study the law with a local attorney and prepare for the bar exam.

In 1885 the town of Argonia was incorporated, and again history was made. Susanna’s father became the first mayor, and her husband, Lewis, became the city clerk. As city clerk, Lewis was responsible for writing the ordinances of the newly incorporated town.

In 1885 a bill was introduced in the Kansas state legislature to grant women the right of voting in municipal elections. Two years later the Kansas legislature passed the legislation, and governor John A. Martin signed it into law on February 15, 1887.

In Argonia, Susanna had become an active member and officer in the local W.C.T.U. (Women’s Christian Temperance Union), which had been organized in Argonia in 1883. With the passage of legislation allowing women the right to vote in Kansas municipalities, the Argonia chapter of the W.C.T.U. decided to make the enforcement of a state prohibition of liquor law a priority in the city election, which was to be held in 1887. Due to the absence of their president, Susanna presided at a meeting which selected a ticket of men whom the W.C.T.U. considered eligible for the city’s political offices – and who supported the W.C.T.U. agenda.

Some of the ‘wets’ in town – those men who opposed the ideas of the W.C.T.U. and favored the open sale of alcohol – held a secret meeting that developed a plan of Machiavellian proportions designed to defeat the W.C.T.U. and lessen the influence of that organization.

They decided to draw up a list of candidates identical with that of the W.C.T.U. – only with Susanna Salter’s name in the mayoral slot. Their thought was that the men in the community would not vote for a woman – nor would many of the W.C.T.U. members. In the end, the W.C.T.U. would, so the plan proposed, be politically embarrassed and would lose some of its influence as a political organization. Susanna Slater’s name was chosen because she was the only W.C.T.U. officer living within the city limits, and therefore eligible to run for mayor.

The election laws at the time did not require advance notice of candidacy, so the plotters ran off their copies of the ballot just before the April 4th election. Because of this, neither Susanna nor her family knew that she was on the ballot.

Surprise and shock greeted the early voters on election day when they saw a woman’s name as candidate for mayor. Word soon spread, and the chairman of the Republican Party in Argonia quickly determined what had been done and organized a delegation to visit Susanna. They found her in her yard, hanging up the laundry. They explained what had happened, asking her if she would accept the post if she won. She agreed.

The delegation spent the day explaining the situation to voters, and worked in the city to get out the vote. Lewis Salter – who was one of the early voters – was reported perturbed when he discovered that his wife was on the ballot, and more so when he returned home and found out that she had consented to be the mayor if she won the election. He eventually consoled himself with the event, even calling himself “the husband of the Mayor”.

Accompanied by her parents, Susanna went to the polls around 4 PM. As was customary for the day, she did not vote for herself – leaving the position of mayor on the ballot unmarked.

Showing that the ‘best laid plans’ can go astray, Susanna Salter was elected mayor of Argonia – and the first woman mayor in the United States. The official notice of the election stated:

ARGONIA 4/6/87
DORA SALTER, Argonia

Madam

You are hereby notified that at an election held in the city of Argonia on Monday April 4/87, for the purpose of electing city officers, you were duly elected to the office of Mayor of said city. You will take due notice thereof and govern yourself accordingly.

WM. H WATSON MAYOR

F.A. RUSE Clerk Pro. tem.

There were also five members of the town council elected – three of whom had been in on the plot to embarrass the women of the W.C.T.U.. Reportedly the new mayor had no trouble with the council during her yearlong term. She stated at the first meeting:

“Gentlemen, what is your pleasure? You are the duly elected officials of this town, I am merely your presiding officer."

The council and the mayor got along during their yearlong term. No new ordinances were passed – though it was a time of continued adjustment and application of the city ordinances that were created a mere two years earlier. One sad note during the term of Susanna: one of her children was born during her term as mayor, and died in infancy.

There was quite a bit of press coverage of the election of a woman mayor – both national and foreign newspapers came to the small Kansas town, interviewed the people, attended council meetings – each reflecting the view of their editors as to whether a woman mayor was a good or a bad thing. One item of continued interest was that Susanna was only 27 years old when elected to office. Another was that the position paid one dollar annually.

When asked about her future ambitions in politics by one of the eastern newspapers, Susanna replied:

"No, indeed, I shall be very glad when my term of office expires, and shall be only too happy to thereafter devote myself entirely, as I always have done heretofore, to the care of my family."

Susanna did not run for office again after her year in office expired. She and her family would leave Argonia when the Cherokee Strip was oned in 1893 where Lewis filed a claim on land near Alva, Oklahoma. In 1903 he sold the farm and moved to Augusta where he practiced law and established a newspaper.

Lewis died in 1916, and Susanna moved her family to Norman, Oklahoma, so her youngest child could attend the state university there. She would pass away at the age of 101 on March 17, 1961, and is buried in Argonia, Kansas.

A political ploy had backfired, electing the first woman mayor in the United States. She accepted the job she had not applied for, and made history.

WEB RESOURCES:

Kansas Historical Quarterly
Kansas State Historical Society
KTWU interview transcript
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Portrait of Suzanna Salter, age 27: Kansas Historical Society
Portrait of Suzanna and her husband: Kansas Historical Society
Map of Sumner County, 1887: David Rumsey Collection
Salter home in Argonia: Salter House Museum
Letter notifying Suzanna of her election as mayor: Kansas Memory

Portrait of Suzanna Salter at 94: Kansas Historical Society

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February 26: John Harvey Kellogg, Crown Prince of Cereal

Very likely most Americans recognize the name – it’s seen every time one visits the breakfast cereal section of the grocery store. But the man behind the development of a new style of food for breakfast cereals was a pioneer in the wellness movement - but not a partner in the company that made corn flake cereal famous.

John Harvey Kellogg was born on February 26, 1852, in Tyrone, New York. He would move to Battle Creek, Michigan at an early age with his parents, John Preston and Ann Jeanette Stanley Kellogg. His parents were devout Seventh-day Adventists, and this would have a bearing on John Kellogg’s life, occupation, and fame. His father operated a broom factory there where Kellogg would work with his father. He also served as a ‘printer’s devil’ in various publishing houses in Battle Creek.

He had a public education, working his way through the public schools of Battle Creek, then attending Russell T. Trall’s Hygeio-Therapeutic College for five months, then Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern Michigan University), and finally receiving a M.D. degree from the New York University Medical College at Bellevue Hospital – where Kellogg graduated at the age of 23 in 1875. Some credit the beginning of biomedicine to Kellogg, based on his graduation thesis What Is Disease? – which reflected the natural hygiene beliefs of his mentor, Russell Trall.

He would continue his education by studying in Europe at various times between 1883 and 1911. His movement into the medical profession was promoted and provided for by two people he had worked for as a teenager: James and Ellen White, two of the founding members of the Seventh day Adventist church. As a physician, Kellogg would become an advocate of the views of the Adventist Church, especially those considering the dietary approach to healthy living.

He would start editing the Adventist’s Health Reformer newsletter in 1872, and after graduation from medical school he began working at the Adventist’s Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek. He was twenty-four years old when he became the superintendent of it in 1876, and would rename it the Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1878, designing it as a place where people could learn how to stay well. Eventually the ‘Sans’ would become a center for the rich and famous to visit. He also renamed the Health Reformer, which became the Good Health magazine.

He married Ella Eaton of Alfred Center, New York, on February 22, 1879. While the couple was childless, they made a goal of providing funds for the education of deserving children, and would virtually raise about forty children in their fifty-room home before Ella died in 1920. Over the years the Kellogg’s would adopt seven of the children.

At ‘Sans’ Kellogg would advocate a health program consisting mainly of a gain-based vegetarian diet. He also advocated things that we hear about today: diet, exercise, fresh air, sunshine, good posture, and dress, along with hydrotherapy. He was an early holistic doctor – practicing a plan for wellness in a time when antibiotics were largely unheard of. He took an early stand against caffeine, meat, alcohol, and tobacco. Some of his ideas can be found in the forward to a booklet titled “The Simple Life In A Nutshell”:

“Biologic living means health, comfort, efficiency, long life.

It means good digestion, sound sleep, a clear head, a placid mind, content and joy to be alive.

Live out of doors. Do your work under the trees instead of behind doors and opaque walls. Dig in the garden, explore the woods and hills. Follow the brooks, watch the squirrels in their gambols and learn the songs of the birds.

Fix up a sleeping porch or balcony and so take an outing all night long and every night, and don't move inside when frost comes. Outdoor sleeping is the best life-preserver known.

And live on the "fat of the land." Forget breakfast foods and culinary delicacies. Abjure flesh pots and "sea food." Find your whole bill of fare in the garden,—peaches, apples, luscious grapes, plums and pears, lettuce, green corn, celery, greens, tomatoes, melons, nuts, and all the rest of the luxuries which Mother Earth supplies. Revel in salads and berries, and green stuffs untouched by fire. These dainty foods abound in vitamins, and vitamins are the real elixir of life discovered at last in this twentieth century.”

Concerning the importance of grains in a vegetarian diet, Kellogg wrote that natural "foods abound in vitamins, and vitamins are the real elixir of life discovered at last in this twentieth century."

Kellogg’s medical and philosophical background – as well as a timely accident - created the momentum for him and his brother, Will, to form the Sanitas Food Company in 1897. The invention of flaked grain-based cereal occurred through an accident. The two brothers had invented several foods made from grains. The grains were forced through rollers to make long sheets of dough. One day they were called away while cooking wheat and when they returned, the wheat seemed over cooked. However, they decided to put the wheat through the rollers anyway – and each wheat berry was flattened into a thin flake. They had discovered ‘flaked’ cereals.

The typical breakfast of the wealthy in the late 19th century was eggs and meat (while the poor had porridge, gruel, and other boiled grains), the Kellogg’s would advocate whole grain cereals as the major breakfast diet. They were not the first to produce a dry cereal – that honor goes to Dr. James Caleb Jackson who created the first dry breakfast cereal, which he called Granula, in 1863. But they did bring corn flakes and wheat flakes to the dry breakfast cereal market.

Unfortunately, older John Kellogg treated his less-educated and younger brother Will more as an employee than a partner. That, combined with Will wanting to add sugar to the corn flakes, led to a split between the two brothers. In 1906, Will started his own company, the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which eventually became the Kellogg Company, triggering a decades-long feud over the rights to cereal recipes. John then formed the Battle Creek Food Company to develop and market soy products.

Kellogg was also an inventor, receiving over thirty patents for his various inventions. These inventions included the electric blanket, the universal dynamometer (for testing the strength of muscles), and the electric light bath – as well as some improved medical instruments for the surgeons to use.

He also was a prodigious author, writing over fifty books concerning health advocacy, as well as numerous magazine articles. He also promoted what he believed in, becoming one of the primary founders in Battle Creek of the American Medical Missionary College and the Battle Creek College. He also organized a School of Home Economics and a School of Physical Education – carrying his beliefs into the classroom.

He continued his practice as a skilled surgeon into his seventies, and often operated with no fee on those who could not afford surgery. He warned that smoking caused cancer – decades before the link was discovered.

While he had been highly involved with the Seventh Day Adventist Church for 2/3rds of his life, the church would expel him in 1907 due to his divergent views on the Bible and his belief in pantheism, the belief that there is a divine presence in all living things. As the twentieth century got underway, he had split from his family, forsaken the use of the Kellogg name on cereal products, and split from his church.

With the coming of the Great Depression, the ‘Sans’ would fall on hard times, and go into receivership, and Kellogg’s Battle Creek Food Company would fall on hard times. Also, many of his more extreme ideas would be increasingly criticized by the public and the press.

Kellogg was on his deathbed when he tried to reconcile with his brother – even writing a letter admitting that he had been wrong in his earlier treatment of Will, and in fighting Will in court for the cereal rights. However, his secretary - entrusted to mail the letter - never did, and John Kellogg died without being reconciled with his brother.

After suffering through three days of pneumonia, John Harvey Kellogg died on December 14, 1943, at the age of 91. His wife, Ella, had passed away in 1920. They are buried at the Oak Hill Cemetery, Battle Creek, Michigan.

William Shurtleff would write perhaps the best overall description of John Harvey Kellogg:

"Kellogg was a dynamo of human energy, a personification of the work ethic, who needed only 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night, went cycling or jogging every morning, dictated 25 to 50 letters a day, adopted and reared 42 children, wrote nearly 50 books, edited a major magazine, performed more than 22,000 operations, gave virtually all of his money to charitable organizations, loved human service, generally accomplished the work of ten active people, and lived in good health to age 91."

WEB RESOURCES:

Faqs.org
Find A Grave
Natural Health Perspective
New York Times obituary
NNDB
Wikipedia


PHOTO SOURCES:

Woodcut print of John Kellogg, Wikipedia
Photo portrait of John Kellogg, Natural Health Perspective
1910 Corn Flakes Advertisement, Wikipedia
Picture of Kellogg in the early 20th century, NNDB
Kellogg family gravestone, Find A Grave picture by Scott Michaels
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February 22: Marguerite Clark, Film Fantasy Queen

She had a beautiful, waiflike quality that came across well in the silent films of the early 20th century. She was a contemporary of actors and actresses still recognized today, such as Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Lillian Gish. Despite the competition, or perhaps because of it, she was voted America’s top female star in 1916, and again in 1920. Her film career would voluntarily end in 1921 when she married a Louisiana plantation owner.

Marguerite Clark was born on an Ohio farm on February 22, 1883, near Avondale in the southwest corner of Ohio. Not much is known about her childhood, early education, or parents, but it is known that she was sent to the Brown County Convent, a Roman Catholic boarding school in Cincinnati, when she was about twelve. Her father died when she was around eleven, leaving the family in financial difficulties. She would eventually be watched over, and later have her career managed, by her older sister, Cora.

She finished school when she was sixteen, already having decided to pursue a career in the theater. The 4’10”, 90 pound actress would quickly show herself to be a talented actress..

Clark could sing, dance, and act at a young age. She would start her stage career as a chorus girl in Baltimore in 1899, and within a year, when she was seventeen, she was discovered by DeWolf Hopper Sr. and taken to New York. Clark made her Broadway debut in The Belle of Bohemia. She would receive positive reviews for her work in Mr. Pickwick in 1903, The Wishing Ring and Baby Mine in 1910, and starred opposite of theater legend John Barrymore in the 1912 production The Affairs of Anatol.

Clark’s popularity led to into a new venue for her talent: she signed a contract in 1914 with the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, with whom she made all of her movies during the next seven years except for the last one – which she made with her own production company. Thirty-one was then, as it is now, relatively late in life to start a film career. However, Clark had a waif-like, little girl quality that made her look much younger than her actual age, and she would specialize in playing young girls and fantasy roles. Her film debut would be in a movie short titled Wildfire, and the reviews would claim that her debut was “the best screen performance to date.”

Edward S. O’Reilly interviewed Clark in 1918 for Photoplay magazine. He stated about her:

“My impression of Miss Clark, formed by viewing her pictures, was that she was a happy hearted little elf smiling her way through the sour old world. She is all of that and something more. She is a serious minded little person intent on doing her work well. Even the directors say that she is less trouble than anyone in the cast, and obeys orders like a little soldier.”

She would work on forty films during her seven-year movie career, starting with Wildfire, and ending with Scrambled Wives in 1921. She was ready to give up the hustle and bustle of movie life, and settle for the quiet and serenity of living in the country in Louisiana. Also, her ambition had been to end her career when she was at the top, which she achieved in 1920 when she was recognized as America’s top female star.

Clark met Harry Palmerson Williams during a War Bond Drive in 1917, and married him in 1918. She would take up residence in his home in Patterson, Louisiana. She divided her time between her Louisiana home and New York – where she made most of her movies. Clark did have a new rule to follow in her movies: her husband forbade her to kiss any of her leading men, a demand that she met willingly.

Harry Williams grew up in Louisiana, owned and managed a lumber yard (one of the largest in the world), plantation, and other interests there, and in the late 1920s entered the budding aviation industry, using his managerial skill and business know-how, combined with skilled aeronautical engineers, to develop a series of racing aircraft. Williams would eventually die in when an airplane he was piloting crashed in 1936.

Clark returned to New York after the death of her husband in 1936 to reunite with her sister Cora – who had been her manager during her stage and film career. She would be the model for the cartoon image of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney’s 1937 masterpiece. Disney had seen Clark in the 1916 silent film version of Snow White and, he later confessed, the film made a lasting impression on him. A brief film clip of that film is here.

She would die in New York on September 25, 1940, after a brief bout with pneumonia. Her ashes are buried with her husband’s in the Williams mausoleum at Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans.

Most of Marguerite Clark’s films have disappeared, yet the legend of the little girl in the fantasy films still continues.

WEB RESOURCES:

All Movie
Find A Grave
Golden Silents
Google books
IMDB
Interviews with Marguerite Clark
Louisiana State Museum
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Frontal view of Marguerite Clark, Louisiana State Archives
1916 Publicity Photo, Wikipedia
1919 Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch publicity photo, New York Public Library

Harry Williams, husband to Marguerite, Louisiana State Archives
Gravesite, FindAGrave photo by Rob Leverett
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February 9: Samuel J. Tilden, The Man Who Should Have Been President

Controversial elections occur periodically in any democracy, but few have been as controversial as the election of 1876. The winner in popular votes, but the loser in electoral votes, was New York born Samuel Jones Tilden.

Tilden was born at New Lebanon, New York, on February 9, 1814 - a descendent of a family that could trace its roots back to the founding of the New England colonies.

His lineage included Nathaniel Tilden, one of the leaders of Plymouth colony and a founder of the town of Scituate, Massachusetts; as well as William Jones, a lieutenant-governor of New haven colony. His parents were Elam Tilden and Polly Youngblood Jones. His father, a farmer and a merchant in New Lebanon, was known for his judgment and practical common sense, and was a respected power in the New Lebanon area. Among those who visited the elder Tilden while young Samuel was growing to maturity were such noted personalities as Albert Gallatin, Martin Van Buren, and Edward Livingston.

Tilden’s interest in politics, economics, law, and civics came from his parents and the multitude of politically significant visitors. As early as 1832, when young Tilden was 18, he submitted a paper to his father analyzing the political conditions that existed in the 1832 election. He father was so impressed that he took his son to see the vice presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren, who was visiting Lebanon Springs. The article was later published and – though Van Buren vigorously denied authorship – was attributed to Van Buren. The two men – a political leader and a young man – became lifelong friends..

Tilden would attend Yale, and then transferred to the University of New York to study law. He graduated in 1837. He would be admitted to the bar in 1841, and would become one of the most noted and skilled corporate lawyers of the nation. Many of his clients would be from the fledgling railroad industry. It is said that over half of the railroad companies between the Hudson and Missouri Rivers were his clients at one time or another during the 1850’s – 1860s.

Tilden continued to maintain and broaden the interest in politics he had since his youth. A strong supporter of Martin Van Buren, he would later be classified as a Free Soil Democrat – one of the few free soil supporters who did not move into the new Republican party in the 1850s. While he supported the efforts of unity during the Civil War, he did not support all of the Lincoln Administrations various measures during that war.

Tilden’s political career really began as a result of his life-long interest in politics. In 1855 he was named as a nominee for state attorney general.

In 1866 Tilden was appointed the state chairman of the Democratic Party. There his reformist spirit took on the corrupt Tweed Ring. He entered the New York Assembly in 1872 under the reformist banner, and proceeded to impeach the judges that had been ‘bought’ by the Tweed Ring, and were busy protecting them from the law. He would gather much of the evidence that eventually broke up this notorious political group. In 1874 he was elected governor of New York, and took on the infamous Canal Ring – which had made its millions from illegal bribes concerning the maintenance, repair, and extension of the state’s extensive canal network.

The battle against corruption led Tilden to the high-water mark of his political career – the campaign for the Presidency against Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. This campaign – on the heels of the revelations of corruption that dogged the Ulysses S. Grant presidency – would result in one of the most famous election disputes in American History – only, perhaps, to be eclipsed by the 2000 Bush/Gore campaign.

Tilden received a small majority of the overall popular vote – however, American presidents are chosen through an electoral college system, where whichever party receives the most popular votes in a state receives all of that state’s electoral votes. As it turned out, the electoral votes in three of the newly ‘reconstructed’ southern states – Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina – as well as one electoral vote from Oregon were disputed. The U.S. Constitution did not address the issue, so Congress created an electoral commission made up of five U.S. Senators, five members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and five Supreme Court Justices. Seven of the commission were Republicans, seven were Democrats, and there was one Independent.

However, the Independent was appointed to be the U.S. Senator from Illinois, he was replaced by a Republican to take his spot on the commission. The commission would vote solely along party lines, and on March 2, 1877, just two days before the new president was to be sworn in, would give Hayes all of the disputed electoral votes – giving him a majority of one (185 to 184) and the presidency.

Tilden discouraged opposition from his party to the decision of the Electoral Commission. An offshoot of this was what became known as the Hayes-Tilden Compromise - or the compromise of 1877: Hayes became President, and the military occupation of the southern states was ended. The end of the military occupation of the south had been a major campaign issue for the Democrats during the election campaign.

Tilden, 63 years old when the disputed election was decided, retired from public office. He would die in 1884 in Yonkers, New York. He left three million dollars in a trust toward the establishment of a free public library in York City – a trust what would be combined with the Astor and Lenox Libraries and would eventually become the New York Public Library.

He is buried at Cemetery of the Evergreens, New Lebanon, New York.

WEB RESOURCES:

1911 Encyclopedia
Biographical Sketch, 1878
Find A Grave, Tilden
Harpers Weekly Cartoons 1876
Life of Samuel J. Tilden
NPS
NY Times Obituary
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

Portrait of Samuel J. Tilden, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SamuelJTilden.png
1876 Campaign Poster, Library of Congress, rbpe 23702200
Members of the Electoral Commission, Harpers Weekly
The Inauguration, Harpers Weekly
Tilden Gravesite, Find-A-Grave
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January 14: Benedict Arnold, Hero Becomes Traitor

He was a descendent from a distinguished family, a hero of the battle that is known as the ‘Turning Point of the American Revolution’; a man who lost a leg in battle in service to his country; yet a man who let jealously, pride, and greed turn him against the nation he served and into a notoriety that continues today.

Benedict Arnold was born on January 14, 1741, in Norwich, Connecticut. He was the second of six children born to Benedict Arnold III and Hannah Waterman King, and was named after his great-grandfather who was an early, three-time governor of Rhode Island, as well as his brother, who died in infancy. Only two of the Arnold children would survive to adulthood – Benedict and his sister Hannah.

Arnold had several character traits that would follow him throughout his life, hindering his opportunities for advancement and the recognition he desired. Arnold was enrolled in a private school when he was ten with the expectation that he would attend Yale. However, he wasn’t studious and persistent in his studies. A yellow fever epidemic struck a devastating blow to the Connecticut family in 1753 – taking the lives of three of Arnold’s siblings. Soon after that the family fortune began to decline, and by the time Arnold was fourteen there was no more money for a private education – or for Yale.

The outbreak of the French and Indian War when Arnold was fifteen proved to be a lure to the young man, but he was refused enlistment in the provincial militia when his mother would not give her permission. Undaunted, Arnold would enlist when he turned sixteen. His enlistment came when the militia was ready to march toward Albany, New York and Lake George to oppose a French invasion. After hearing about the French massacre of the British and colonial forces at Fort William Henry, the Connecticut militia turned around and marched home. Arnold’s enlistment lasted thirteen days. It became popular after the Revolution to write that Arnold would run away from home to join the militia and had deserted from his militia company.

Because of the financial situation of his family, Arnold was apprenticed to Daniel and Joshua Lathrop, cousins of his mother. They ran an apothecary and general merchandise store in Norwich, Connecticut, where Arnold spent seven years learning the principals of pharmacy and business.

In 1762, the Lanthrop brothers provided financial backing for the 21-year-old Arnold to start his own pharmacy business in New Haven, Connecticut. A year later he had repaid the money borrowed from the Lanthrops. By 1764 he had expanded his business interests through a partnership with Adam Babcock, and purchasing three trading ships in order to engage in the lucrative West Indies trade. Arnold would bring his sister Hannah to New Haven to help manage his apothecary shop while he was sailing on one of his ships. Often he would captain the ship, engaging in trade from the West Indies to Canada.

The British Sugar Act (1764) and Stamp Act (1765) limited the mercantile trade in the American colonies – and many voiced their opposition. Arnold would join the Sons of Liberty as well as engage in smuggling to avoid the customs agents and the taxes that he felt was stifling colonial enterprise and prosperity. His thoughts are perhaps best shown in a comment made after Arnold heard of the Boston Massacre: “good God; are the Americans all asleep and tamely giving up their liberties, or are they all turned philosophers, that they don’t take immediate vengeance on such miscreants.”

He also was concerned because he had a family to support. He married Margaret Mansfield, daughter of the sheriff of New Haven, in 1767. They would have three children prior to her early death in 1775 – while Arnold was at Fort Ticonderoga during the opening year of the Revolution.

Arnold would move swiftly up the military ladder – but not swiftly enough for him. He was elected as a captain in Connecticut’s militia in March 1775. He proposed an audacious attack on Fort Ticonderoga – which he knew to be lightly defended – and was promoted to Colonel. He arrived in time to participate in an attack on the Fort by Ethan Allen and his ‘Green Mountain Boys’. The fort fell, but Arnold – who had followed the procedures and the chain of command of the fledgling American military structure - felt that the full glory of the idea and the victory should have gone to him.

He was, however, given command of the American forces in the Lake Champlain area, and would use that region as a launching point for an American overland march on Quebec. Arnold had proposed the overland march, which took place during the winter of 1775. He was given the rank of Colonel in the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress, and in the end would be wounded, and be forced to lay siege of Quebec until relieved. The Continental Congress promoted him to Brigadier General for his efforts.

The American army was forced to retreat in 1776 when British reinforcements arrived in Canada. Arnold presided over the American rear-guard actions during the Continental Army’s retreat. He then directed the construction of an impromptu fleet to defend Lake Champlain, New York. The Americans were defeated after a grueling 7-hour battle, but had succeeded in slowing the British advance into New York. As a result of the October 1776 battle, Arnold was called the ‘Father of the American Navy’.

Arnold made a number of enemies in Congress and in the hierarchy of the Continental Army during these first years of the war. He began to feel slighted, not receiving the promotions or the leadership opportunities that he felt he deserved, and for not being given credit for his military ideas. While his accomplishments were notable, others often took credit away from him. He was even charged with stealing military supplies, and was on the verge of being arrested when General Horatio Gates stopped the arrest because he needed Arnold in the field. British General Burgoyne was marching south through New York in the spring of 1777.

Arnold would distinguish himself at Saratoga – and would also see his hopes of command in the American army dashed. On his own initiative he brought his reserve troops into the battle at just the right moment to save the Americans from defeat, and to give them a victory over the British, a victory that became the turning point of the war. He also lost the use of a leg to wounds incurred during the battle. Gates claimed the victory, Arnold was passed over for promotion and the glory he felt he deserved; and – ultimately – would be investigated by Congress for corruption.

While recovering he met and fell in love with Peggy Shippen, daughter of a prominent Loyalist. They married on April 8, 1779. One of her former suitors was British Major Andre – who would become involved with Arnold’s plan to turn West Point over to the British.

Arnold toyed with the idea of supporting the British in this war the colonists had started against the Crown. After some negotiations, he would be given command of West Point, a crucial defense point on the Hudson River. Ultimately, the plans to turn the fort over to the British were discovered – with the final proof being found with the capture of Arnold’s contact, Major Andre.

Arnold fled, would be given the position of Brigadier General by the British, and would lead several raids on colonial cities – briefly capturing Richmond, Virginia and attacking New London, Connecticut. He had a far-reaching goal – to destroy the economic basis of the rebels, driving them to submission or starvation.

As the war ended, Arnold and his family would move to England, then after the war to New Brunswick, Canada. There he reentered the business world and established a thriving trade route with the West Indies. However, his remaining years were bitter ones. Maligned by the Americans, distrusted by the British, he found that many military, political, and economic doors were not open to him.

Arnold died on June 14, 1801, after returning to England.

The name Benedict Arnold has become synonymous with the word traitor to Americans. He was immediately demonized by American writers as soon as his actions became know. All of the contributions to the revolution that he had made – and the injuries he had sistained in that revolution, both physical, economic, and mental, were quickly forgotten. Benjamin Franklin wrote that "Judas sold only one man, Arnold three millions", and that became a common theme through the rest of American history writings up to today.

WEB RESOURCES:

1911 Encyclopedia
Archiving Early America
Clements Library
Colonial Williamsburg
National Park Service
NNDB
Virtuology
Wikipedia

PHOTO SOURCES:

A pen and ink portrait of Arnold, NNDB
Portrait of Arnold in military uniform, National Archives
1780 French map of West Point, Boston Public Library
Peggy Shippen, National Archives
Capture of Major Andre, Library of Congress
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