by David DeKok
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sometimes a book takes much longer to finish than the author ever expects. In 1989, I set out to write a definitive account of General Public Utilities Corporation and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident of 1979. After some early unpleasantness initiated by the company, I discovered that GPU had a fascinating earlier history under the name of Associated Gas & Electric Company, led to ruin by a man named Howard C. Hopson. Instead of focusing only on the accident, I thought, why not write a book that would cover both the Hopson era and GPU’s misadventures with nuclear energy? Then in 1993, while looking at New York Public Service Commission documents related to Associated Gas & Electric in Albany, New York, I found a brief mention of a typhoid epidemic in Ithaca, New York, and realized the company had two catastrophes in its long history. My book grew again. I eventually decided to divide my single GPU book into three; this is the initial volume in what I hope will be a trilogy.
I must first thank my wife, Lisa W. Brittingham, who was always supportive, and my lovely daughters, Elizabeth and Lydia DeKok. They grew from babies to teenagers while this book was in progress. Anyone writing a book spends hours huddled in a small room staring at a laptop or on the road doing research, and without a supportive family those tasks are far more difficult if they are even possible at all.
This book would not have been possible without the help of the staff at Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. Even though the epidemic story does not reflect well upon the Cornell University of 1903, they helped me with enthusiasm and professionalism, especially Phil McCray, a skilled archivist who became a friend and hosted me at his home in Ithaca on numerous research trips. Other staff I should mention by name are Elaine Engst, director and university archivist, who helped in many ways but especially in guiding me through the process of unsealing the Cornell University Executive Committee files from the time of the epidemic, and Julia Parker and Laura Linke, who found and pulled many helpful documents during the years of my research. Special thanks also go to James J. Mingle, Cornell University counsel, who ultimately granted my request to unseal the Executive Committee papers.
I should also thank my cousin, Beth Zelony, and her husband, Rob, for loaning me their New York apartment on my research trips to the newspaper collections of the New York Public Library. Newspapers, especially the long defunct Ithaca Daily News, New York Tribune, and New York Sun, and the still publishing Ithaca Journal, played a critical role in my research. Their day-to-day coverage of the epidemic was invaluable to me. As a journalist, I could appreciate the hard work of these long dead and now anonymous reporters to write the first drafts of history. Some of the Ithaca reporters wrote their stories even while members of their own families lay ill with typhoid. I hope my second draft of history is a credit to their dedication.
It has become easier to access and make use of old newspaper articles with the advent of NewspaperArchive.com, which has gathered many of America’s newspapers (though not yet all, and not yet those in Ithaca) into its database. When I found articles about the Ithaca epidemic in newspapers around the country, I knew it had been a national story. Researching my book was likewise made immensely easier by Google Books, the vacuum cleaner of our published past, the ultimate collector of digital copies of the “quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore” that Poe once wrote about. Because Google Books allows keyword searching within its vast database, I was able to find any number of helpful books and articles that likely would have escaped my attention otherwise. I know many, including me, have qualms about how Google Books will ultimately affect writers and readers, especially if it chooses to begin charging for its services. For now, though, it is quite useful. But so are the older ways of research, and I am grateful to the staff of the Dauphin County Library in Harrisburg for finding many obscure titles for me via interlibrary loan. I’m sure some of my requests prompted some head scratching. The wide-ranging collections of the Pennsylvania State Library in Harrisburg were also invaluable. Thanks also to the Yates County Historical Society in Penn Yan, New York, for directing me to its collections of newspaper clippings relating to William T. Morris and for permission to photograph the 1912 oil painting of him that hangs in its museum. I also made good use of the collections of The History Center in Tompkins County, which gave me permission to use its photograph of Theodore Zinck. Photographs of George A. Soper, the savior of Galveston, Texas, and Ithaca, New York, who tracked down Typhoid Mary, are surprisingly rare, but Casey Greene at the Rosenberg Library in Galveston was able to provide me with one taken just two or three years before Soper arrived in Ithaca. Writing my book would have been much more difficult without the prior research done on Ithaca’s founding families by Carol U. Sisler. Her excellent book, Enterprising Families: Ithaca, New York, was never far from my desk. Ulrike Folkens of the Robert Koch Institut in Berlin helped me find Dr. Koch’s seminal writings on typhoid carriers.
Many people helped me find information about the Cornell University students who died in the epidemic, who often were the best and brightest in their hometowns. Maudine Bennum at the Harrison County Genealogical Society in Bethany, Missouri, and Gary Cox at the University of Missouri Archives in Columbia provided valuable information on the life and death of Oliver G. Shumard, the first Cornell student to die. Similarly, my thanks go to the Steuben County Historian’s Office in Bath, New York, for help in finding a local news clip about the death of Charlotte Spencer; to Jean Ellis, reference librarian at the Passaic Public Library in Passaic, New Jersey, for clips on the death of George Wessman, Henry Schoenborn, and William J. Reinhart; to Fred Miller, president of the Tuscarawas County Historical Society in Ohio for clips on the death of James Vinton; to Susan L. Conklin, Genesee County historian, for a very helpful clip from the Batavia Daily News in Batavia, New York, on the death of Charles J. Schlenker; and to Robert J. Scheffel, local history librarian at the Rochester Public Library, for clips on the death of Otto Kohls.
Thanks also go to Jean Long, town historian of Alfred, New York, for material on the family of Charles Langworthy; to Lois A. Foxwell, archivist of Alfred University, for tracking down documents relating to the life of an alumnus, Dr. Daniel Lewis, who was the New York State health commissioner during the 1903 epidemic, as well as clips from the Alfred Sun about the death of Charles Langworthy; to Charlotte Garofalo of the Gouverneur Reading Room Association in Gouverneur, New York, for an obituary of George S. Hill; to Donna K. Baron and Ted Fuller of the Middlesex County Historical Society in Middletown, Connecticut, for clips on the death of Lewis K. Hubbard, and to Barbara Goodwin at the Windsor Historical Society in Windsor, Connecticut, for information on Flavia Thrall, the clairvoyant healer who failed to save Hubbard from typhoid; to Wyoming County historian Doris A. Bannister in Warsaw, New York, for clips on the deaths of James Francis McEvoy and Henry Norris Rockwell; to the Sherburne Public Library in Sherburne, New York, for clips on the death of Fred J. Pray; and to the Oneida County Historical Society for clips on the death of Addison P. Lord.
I never cease to be amazed by New York’s state system of 1,640 official local historians, which dates to 1919. Nearly every county has one, and so do many towns and villages. Historians are required to have a level of education appropriate to their work and are held to high standards of professionalism. I worry that this valuable service might become a juicy target in an era of government budget crises. Libraries themselves are no longer sacrosanct. In Pennsylvania, where I live, the current governor, Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat, has slashed funding for public libraries. Writing books like this one will become increasingly difficult if our society does not maintain the institutions that preserve our history.
David DeKok
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
August 15, 2010
ENDNOTES
Abbreviations
ADW—Andrew Dickson White Papers, 01/02/02, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. White was the c
ofounder of and first president of Cornell University.
CUTP—Cornell University Typhoid Papers Collection, 35/4/42, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
EC—Records of the Executive Committee of the Cornell University Board of Trustees, 2/5/5. The Executive Committee was made up of the members of the Board of Trustees who lived in or near Ithaca. It handled most of the business of the university.
JGS—Jacob Gould Schurman Papers, 3/4/6, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Schurman was president of Cornell University from 1892 to 1920 and held office during the typhoid epidemic.
MVC—Mynderse Van Cleef Papers, #3088, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. Van Cleef was a lawyer and banker in Ithaca and a close friend of William T. Morris. He was a member of the university Board of Trustees and its Executive Committee.
Prelude: June 16, 1903
1.The average income in all American industries, excluding farm labor, in 1903 was $543. See, Scott Derks, ed., Working Americans, 1880–1999, Vol. II, The Middle Class (Lakeville, CT: Grey House, 2000), 53–54, 62.
2.President Jacob Gould Schurman of Cornell University to Andrew Dickson White, March 9, 1903; Samuel D. Halliday to Andrew D. White, March 2, 1903; Clara Newberry to Andrew Dickson White, February 27, 1903; Andrew White Newberry to Andrew Dickson White, February 22, 1903. All in ADW.
3.“Andrew D. White Talks to Seniors: Graduating Class Marches to Former President’s House,” Ithaca Daily Journal, June 16, 1903.
4.Tom Lutz, American Nervousness 1903: An Anecdotal History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 18.
5.“All Evidence Goes to Prove Theory Theodore Zinck Took His Own Life,” Ithaca Daily News, June 17, 1903; “Theodore Zinck Drowns in Lake,” Ithaca Journal, June 17, 1903. The Daily News was the morning paper and the Journal the evening paper. Most details about Zinck’s drowning and the immediate aftermath come from these two articles. Zinck and his family used the original spelling of “Theodor,” including on his tombstone, but the newspapers and Surrogate Court used the Americanized spelling of “Theodore.”
6.Romeyn Berry, Behind the Ivy: Fifty Years in One University With Visits to Sundry Others (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950), 164–65.
7.The March 9, 1903, date of Zinck’s last will and testament is found in documents filed in the proceeding In the Matter of the Estate of Theodore Zinck, deceased, in Surrogate’s Court of Tompkins County.
8.George A. Soper, “The Epidemic of Typhoid Fever at Ithaca, N.Y.” Journal of the New England Water Works Association Vol. 18, No. 4 (January 1905): 431.
9.Charles-Edward Amory Winslow, “The War Against Disease,” Atlantic Monthly (January 1903): 43–53.
10.William T. Sedgwick, “Typhoid Fever: A Disease of Defective Civilization,” introductory essay to: George C. Whipple, Typhoid Fever: Its Causation, Transmission and Prevention (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1908), xxxv.
11.“Treman’s Box,” Ithaca Daily News, June 16, 1903.
12.Charles H. Blood to John W. Dwight, May 18, 1903, Charles H. Blood Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
13.Complaint, Tucker & Vinton, Inc., Plaintiff, against The Ithaca Publishing Company and Frank E. Gannett, Defendants, Supreme Court, New York County, June 16, 1903, Collection #1900, Frank E. Gannett & Caroline Werner Gannett Papers, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
Chapter 1: Ithaca and Its Kings
1.Carol U. Sisler, Enterprising Families, Ithaca, New York: Their Houses and Businesses (Ithaca: Enterprise Publishing, 1986), 11–29. Sisler’s book tells well the story of the three Treman brothers and their offspring, as well as of other prominent Ithaca families.
2.T. W. Burns, “Reminiscences, Heroic and Historic, of Early Days of the Lehigh Valley System in Southern and Central New York,” Black Diamond Express, Vol. IX, No. 1 (January 1905): 9.
3.Burns, 12.
4.“Over Half Century Ago, First Works Were Begun,” Ithaca Daily News, December 31, 1904.
5.Ibid.
6. Andrew D. White, Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Volume I (New York: The Century Company, 1905), 342.
7.W.G.I., “Ithaca and the Gorge,” New York Times, letter to the editor, July 11, 1872. The Fall Creek Gorge on the Cornell campus was fenced off for safety and liability reasons in 2009, making it impossible to repeat the climb today.
8.Ernest Earnest, Academic Procession: An Informal History of the American College, 1636 to 1953 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., 1953), 144–45.
9.Cornell University president Jacob Gould Schurman to R. H. Jesse, president of the University of Missouri, JGS.
10.A. F. Weber, “Young and Wealthy: The Value of Cornell University Is $10,000,000,” Fort Wayne (Ind.) Weekly Sentinel, syndicated article, June 19, 1895.
11.Morris Bishop, A History of Cornell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), 224–32.
12.Eugene Hotchkiss, “Jacob Gould Schurman and the Cornell Tradition: A Study of Jacob Gould Schurman, Scholar and Educator, and His Administration of Cornell University, 1892–1920,” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1960), 51.
13.Freetown Historical Society, Freetown Past & Present (Freetown, PEI: Freetown Historical Society, 1985), 9.
14.Hotchkiss, “Schurman and the Cornell Tradition,” 51–52.
15.Ibid., 58.
16.“No Great Minds Here: President Schurman of Cornell Says This Country Is Intellectually Weak,” New York Times, June 21, 1901.
17.Berry, Behind the Ivy, 51.
Chapter 2: The Boys Club
1.Sisler, Enterprising Families, Ithaca, New York, 19.
2.Walter Wolcott, Penn Yan, New York (Penn Yan: Peerless Printing Co., 1915), 44; Lewis Cass Aldrich, ed., History of Yates County, N.Y. (Syracuse, N.Y.: D. Mason & Co., 1892) 190–91; entry on Daniel Morris, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide .congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000974 (Sept. 21, 2009).
3.Cornell University Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections occasionally displays an official copy of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution signed by the members of Congress who adopted it. The “D. Morris” signature of Daniel Morris is prominent among them.
4.William T. Morris alumni file, Collection 41/2/877, Public Affairs Records, Deceased alumni files, 1868–2008, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; “William T. Morris, Prominent Utility Owner and Former Penn Yan Resident, Died Monday,” Penn Yan Chronicle-Express, November 8, 1928.
5.Cornellian yearbooks for 1870–73 for campus activities of William T. Morris, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
6.Morris obituary, Penn Yan Chronicle-Express, November 8, 1928.
7.Records of Baldwin’s Bank of Penn Yan vs. John H. Butler impleaded [sued] with William T. Morris, Yates County Historian’s Office, Penn Yan, N.Y.
8.O. M. W. Sprague, History of Crisis Under the National Banking System (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1910 and 1968), 154, 167–68, 208–9; George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt: 1900–1912 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), 2; Alexander Dana Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909) 266–67.
9.Mowry, 2; Noyes, 284; Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1900, Volume IV, Part 2, Statistics of Deaths (Washington: U.S. Census Office 1902), 175.
10.City of Ithaca, Plaintiff, v. Ithaca Water Works, et al, August 3, 1906, Vol. 21, p. 22. The voluminous transcript of the post-epidemic legal proceedings in which the citizens of Ithaca sought to seize Ithaca Water Works through eminent domain can be found in Box 4 of the Mynderse Van Cleef Pap
ers (#3088) at the Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. The collection also contains the Morris–Van Cleef correspondence. After this it will be referred to as the “water case transcript.”
11.William T. Morris to Mynderse Van Cleef, January 14, 1901; P. W. Bailey to Van Cleef, February 22, 1901; Morris to Van Cleef, February 23, 1901; Bailey to Van Cleef, February 28, 1901. All in MVC.
12.Mark A. Schmidt, “Patriotism and Paradox: Quaker Military Service in the American Civil War.” Written for History 480, West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania, April 18, 2004. Read at: http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his480/reports/civilwar.html on September 19, 2009. Edited for the Web by Jim Jones.
13.“John Brown’s Men Disinterred,” New York Times, August 29, 1899.
14.Catalogue for Five Years, Eagleswood Military Academy, Prospectus for 1866–67 (New York: John A. Grey and Green, Printers, 1866), Marcus and Rebecca Spring Collection, Stanford University Libraries.
15.Michael John Burlingham, Behind Glass: A Biography of Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham (New York: Other Press, 2002), 34–35, 37.
16.Allene M. Parker, “Eagleswood: An American Utopia in Transition, 1851–1890,” (unpublished conference presentation), 11. Parker is on the arts and sciences faculty at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.
17.Frank Thornburg alumni file, Collection 41/2/877, Public Affairs Records, Deceased Alumni Files, 1868–2008, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; Iowa State Gazetteer and Business Directory, 1884–85 (Des Moines: R. L. Polk & Co.), 284.
18.Graham Robb, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th Century (New York: Norton, 2004), 30.
19.Sisler, Enterprising Families, Ithaca, New York, 100.
20.Detailed accounts of L. L. Treman’s funeral can be found in the April 30, 1900, editions of the Ithaca Daily News and the Ithaca Daily Journal.