Later in 1909, Fly organized the National Junior Aero Club, open to boys between 12 and 21. The object as stated in the magazine was, “The advance-ment of the public interest in and the development of the science of aviation.” The article goes on to say, “Had Bishop Wright, when a more or less obscure clergyman, frowned upon the interest displayed by his boys, Wilbur and Orville, in the various toy flying machines they made, it is possible that flight would not now be in its present stage of development.” Membership in the club was $1. It included a subscription to the magazine, a button, and the opportunity to compete in a number of contests.
One offered a prize of $5 for the best photograph and description of a glider made by a member that was submitted that month.
The $5 sent by Captain Manley was enough to buy the materials needed for his glider project, and the $5 prize money provided an additional incentive.
Will’s interest is demonstrated in an exchange that appeared in the February 1910 issue of Fly. In it, the editor of the National Junior Club News page wrote:
One of the most interesting and most faithful correspondents of the Junior Editor began writing really before he became a member of the Junior Club.
His name is W. Jenkins (and I am sorry he has never told me just what the W. stands for), and he lives at “The Tazewell,” Norfolk, Va. Here is his first letter:
Dear Sir,
Enclosed find jingle to be sung to tune of “My Irish Rose.” I have on file every number of Fly magazine since its first issue. Was so struck with it that I have hopes of a yearly subscription as a Christmas gift from my elder brother.
Have an order being filled for materials for a half-size glider, ten feet wide. I have been an “aero-maniac” almost since I can remember, and have constructed several models of the Langley type. One of them, five feet by two, is at my elbow now.
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M U R R A Y L E I N S T E R
Fly magazine cover —1909 (contained plans for glider).
One • The Beginning: 1909
9
I have designed a launching machine that works perfectly. It consists of a band traveling over two large rollers after the manner of a belt conveyer. Lay the model on it and start the rollers and the model is shot into the air with considerable momentum.
I think that a sort of turbine engine to be run by compressed air will be invented in the near future. The compressed air might be taken up in the form of liquid air and reduced to its normal state by alcohol burners under an airtight tank.
My newsdealer sold out all copies of FLY in town before I got there so he simply had to order me one (at least) more. He ordered three and they will be gone this evening.
This is my first letter to you, but I feel like an “old ’un” compared to many of the new experimenters. Though I am but thirteen years old I have been experimenting about four years.
Yours, W. Jenkins
For the benefit of those of the Juniors who may be wondering, I will tell you that the expected Christmas present materialized, for George, the “elder brother,” gave the subscription. A letter since received from this member states that he is about to put a small glider, boy-carrying, as he calls it, into commission, and he will send photographs of it when he gets it into working order. But he isn’t satisfied to conduct his experiment alone, and so is trying to form a local club among the boys he knows in Norfolk. Don’t you wish him success?
Here is his “jingle,” entitled “Aero-Plano-Jane:” With gauntlets on her fingers
And goggles on her nose,
Aeroplanes to carry her
Wherever she goes;
The motors all are chugging,
And the guy-wires whistle, too,
Aero, aero, Aero-Plano-Jane.
Will’s photograph and description of his glider were printed in the March 1910 issue of Fly resulting in another $5. He wrote as follows: I finished my glider on January 15, and, of course, I tried it the same day.
Although the trial took place on level ground and without a breath of wind, I rose nearly two feet several times. Since then, on the twenty-sixth, I took it to Cape Henry, nearly seventeen miles from Norfolk, but easily reached by trolley, and tried it out again. Cape Henry has fine sand-hills for gliding, one of which slants one in ten for nearly a mile.
My first glide was only eight feet, as I wanted to get the “feel” of my glider, but my last flight, in which I broke one of my uprights, covered over forty feet.
The name of my glider is “Condor.” It is ten feet wide. The distance between the planes is two feet and the planes are three feet wide. It is made in four sections to permit being carried on the trolley car. The sections are each five feet
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long and three feet wide and fasten together in a flat bundle. They are spliced by bolts two inches long and one-eighth inch in diameter. Following are other dimensions of the glider:
Main strips, 3⁄8" × 3⁄4" × 5'.
Ribs, 3⁄8" × 1⁄8" × 3'.
Uprights, 3⁄8" × 3⁄8" × 3'.
Tail strip, 3⁄8" × 3⁄8" × 4'.
Bracing was done with small iron wire covered with unbleached cotton. The ribs are nailed to the main strips with the smallest nails obtainable and the cover is sewed to the ribs with No. 10 thread.
As I could get no spruce [ spruce was specified in the 1909 plan] in Norfolk, I used oak throughout, the largest being the arm-sticks, 1⁄2" × 1⁄2" × 2'. I weigh seventy-two and one-half pounds and the glider weighs about fifteen pounds and has about sixty square feet.
Will and his glider “Condor.”
Plans for “Condor” from Fly magazine, March 1909.
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The wood was sawed to order, but I put in every bolt and nailed the ribs myself. A friend helped sew the ribs. I put it together in an apartment and monopolized the sitting room for three weeks. If it isn’t the first in Virginia, it is the first ever made in an apartment.
“And this,” Will would say triumphantly, waving his pipe as he finished retelling the story of receiving $5 from Captain Manly, and another $5 for his contribution to Fly magazine, “is how I got the idea that I could make money from writing.”
After that, Will never looked back. He elaborated on the theme in his guest of honor speech, “Recollections from My Past,” that he delivered to the audience at Disclave 1970, which was sponsored by the Washington, D.C., Science Fiction Association, “From the time I was thirteen ’til I was seventeen, I worked on the belief that if people would pay me for writing about General Lee and gliders, sooner or later they would pay me for writing about other things. When I was seventeen I sold some epigrams to Smart Set for five dollars. During the first year I was selling stuff, I made seventy-two dollars by writing. In my eighteenth year I did better. When I was twenty-one....”
• TWO •
A Southern Family
Will was deeply proud of his southern heritage, showing each of his daughters a typewritten copy of their paternal family tree practically from the time they could read. He often referred to his great-grandfather eight generations back, the first of his family to arrive in the newly settled colonies, Governor John Jenkins.
John Jenkins was first recorded in Cavaliers and Pioneers, in March 1655, living on a 400-acre land grant on the Eastern Shore in Virginia. Later, on September 5, 1663, Sir William Berkeley, governor of Virginia and a lord proprietor of Carolina, gave him a 700-acre grant south of the Perquimans River at Harveys Neck. This was an area that is now part of North Carolina, and it is noted that he was already living there. The lords proprietors later appointed him colonial governor of Albemarle County, which included the area where he lived, and he died in office in 1681.
Will was born on June 16, 1896, and named William Fitzgerald Jenkins.
He was the fifth son, but only the second one living, of George Briggs Jenkins and Mary Louisa “Mamie” Murry. The Fitzgerald name came from
his great-grandmother on his father’s side, Elizabeth Fitzgerald Jenkins. Her tombstone in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Suffolk, Virginia, proudly records that her parents, Matthew and Elizabeth Fitzgerald Madden, were from Dublin, Ireland.
Will used to say that he came from a long line of lawyers. Elizabeth’s son, Will’s grandfather James Edward Jenkins, was a lawyer as was James Edward’s first cousin John Summerfield Jenkins. James Edward graduated in 1846 from the College of William & Mary and practiced law in Suffolk, Virginia.
Will’s uncle John Baugh Jenkins, who was his father’s brother, was also a lawyer.
Will’s paternal grandmother, Mary Virginia Briggs ( James Edward’s wife), was the daughter of Merit Briggs, a prosperous merchant. Mary Virginia’s 13
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brother (Will’s great uncle) George Washington Briggs was a doctor, graduating from the University of Virginia in 1849. Before the War Between the States, he practiced in the Church Hill section of Richmond in a house that is still standing. The Historic Richmond Foundation lists it in its publication as the Merritt Briggs House (one of the variations of the spelling of Merit) after his father, who owned the house.
During the war, Dr. Briggs was a surgeon, a field and staff officer with the rank of major. Later he practiced medicine in Suffolk (formerly Nanse-mond County) and for a time edited a weekly agricultural newspaper, The Rural Messenger in Petersburg, Virginia. At the time of his early death, Dr.
Briggs was a professor of horticulture at the Agricultural College of Maryland, later the University of Maryland.
Robert Crawley Jen kins, the only brother of Will’s paternal grandfather ( James Edward Jenkins), was also a doctor, practicing in Perquimans County, North Carolina.
James Edward Jen kins and Mary Virginia Briggs married in 1848, and George Briggs Jenkins (Will’s father) was born a year later. By 1854, when they purchased a home and office on Main Street in Suffolk, Virginia, there were two more children, Mary
Lucretia and Ann Eliza beth.
In 1857, attracted by the
promise of the new frontier in
St. Louis, Missouri, they sold
the Suffolk property and by
1860 were ensconced in St.
Louis with the youngest chil-
dren, James Webb, Robert Craw -
ley and Henry. James opened a
law office in a location that is
now under the arch in St. Louis.
George and the two eldest girls
were left behind with their
grandparents, Merit and Lucre-
tia Briggs, at The Ex change plan -
tation near Lake Cohoon in
Suf folk. George learned his skills
in bookkeeping and accounting
while working in their store there.
Missouri was deeply divided
Mary Virginia Briggs.
early in 1861 at the beginning of
Two • A Southern Family
15
the Civil War. When Lincoln looked for troops in this border state, Confederate sympathizer Governor Claiborne F. Jackson sent a telegram to the secretary of war saying, “Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on any unholy crusade.” There arose two state governments, and citizens were forced to choose between the Union and Governor Jackson’s Missouri state government.
The Union won out, and Jackson and his government were forced into exile.
Clearly, it was time to leave and return home to Virginia, but Will’s grandfather James and his family faced a difficult journey, and the exact timing is unknown. Another baby, John Baugh, had arrived in November 1860, and they would be returning to Suffolk, a city that had been occupied by Union soldiers since May of 1862. Sometime during this ordeal, little Henry died.
The family got back to Suffolk in time for the birth of their eighth child, Charles Winborne, on June 14, 1863. They were stunned by the death two weeks later on July 3 of James’ first cousin and fellow Suffolk lawyer John Summerfield Jenkins during Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. Nineteen days after that, on July 22, James, 39 years old with a month old baby and six other living children, enlisted in the Confederate Army.
He was soon transferred to the 14th Virginia Cavalry where he served as clerk to a well-known Confederate brigadier general, James Dearing, notable as the last general to die of wounds sustained in the war. It is thought that James probably accompanied General Dearing on the retreat from Petersburg.
General Lee planned to move west and south in an attempt to join General Joseph Johnston’s forces in North Carolina. They marched toward Lynchburg, Virginia, where badly needed supplies were waiting. Lee hoped to stop General Grant by destroying the bridges over the Appomattox River. In the attempt at High Bridge on April 6, General Dearing was fatally wounded. Union soldiers were able to save the wagon bridge over the river, and their troops were able to cut off Lee’s options. Lee was forced to surrender to General Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. James’ parole was signed on April 25, and he was able to go home to Suffolk.
Will’s father, George, was 12 years old in 1861 at the start of the war. He wanted to help and volunteered as a messenger. The family did not want him to travel alone, so they assigned a young slave boy to accompany him. Because slaves were not allowed to cross county lines unless with their owners, Little Billy was given to George. George taught Billy to read and write, although it was against the law to teach that to slaves at the time, and he later told his children of lying on the books to hide them when the officers came to their tent. The two remained in touch, and Will remem bered Uncle Billy coming around as an older man still visiting the family.
The war and reconstruction period left Virginia devastated and in ruins.
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Will’s grandfather James, having lost his citizenship because of his service in the Confederate Army, probably could not practice his profession. Another baby, Mathew, was born in 1867, but James’ health was broken, and soon he was dying of tuberculosis. Their personal property — horse, wagon, hogs, hay and the lot — was sold off piece by piece. After his death in 1868, Mary Virginia, left with seven minor children at home, moved to a farm in Isle of Wight County that had belonged to her father. In 1873, having contracted tuberculosis herself, she died.
Will’s father, George, became 21 in 1870 and was making his own life.
He was the oldest grandchild, and his grandfather Merit Briggs remembered him in his will. At Merit’s death in 1867, George inherited three parcels of land in Isle of Wight County, which he soon sold. He took a job as bookkeeper in Enoch Gale’s shoe store in Norfolk, Virginia, living with the family. There he became enamored with their daughter Emma Dryden Gale. They married around 1873, and Louisa Dryden Jenkins, Will’s much-loved half-sister Lula, was born in 1874. A son, Tommy, was born on February 18, 1878, but died 5
months later. Emma’s health was poor and, after she died on November 15, 1881, her mother, Louisa, continued to take care of little Lula.
George met the woman who would become his second wife and Will’s mother Mary Louisa “Mamie” Murry, in Portsmouth, Virginia, where she was known as a belle. Her red-haired niece, Grace Davis, recalled the story of when Mamie gave herself a party for her 18th birthday and invited 18 guests —
all male! She lived with her family on Court Street in Portsmouth and scribbled the address, along with a boyfriend’s name, in her Episcopal prayer book.
Her maternal grandfather, James Cannon, was a captain on the Old Bay Line, serving on several ships that sailed from Baltimore to Portsmouth includ -
ing the side-wheeler Adelaide. He was well known and popular in both cities.
In those days, steamboat travel was quite formal, and the captains wore frock coats and high silk hats and often served tea from a silver service. A photograph shows him in formal dress, clean-shaven with long ish hair curling around his ears and t
he searching eyes of a sailor. Captain Cannon’s daughter Mary Elizabeth Cannon married Oli ver Perry Murry in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 27, 1861. Maryland did not join the southern states in seceding, but it was definitely pro–Confederacy. In spite of the war, the young couple moved to Ports mouth, Virginia, where they opened a grocery store. Mamie (Will’s mother) was born in Portsmouth on January 13, 1863, and was soon joined by two younger brothers, Oliver “Ollie” and Charles.
Tragically, on a Sunday afternoon in May 1868, Mamie’s father, Oliver Perry Murry, was drowned in the Elizabeth River on a recreational sail from Portsmouth to Norfolk. On the return trip, the small boat capsized in the
Two • A Southern Family
17
middle of the river, and he and his
companion climbed on the
upended bottom. Then, according
to a newspaper account of the
time, Oliver said, “I’ll swim to that
schooner, get a boat and take you
off.” Family legend said that he
didn’t want to take off his new
boots, and they weighed him
down. He sank and didn’t make it
to the schooner. His companion,
however, stayed with the boat and
was rescued. Oliver’s body was not
found for several days, and, in true
tabloid tradition, the newspaper
article detailed what parts had
been nibbled by crabs.
Oliver was an Episcopalian,
and had a Masonic funeral. Al -
Early publicity photograph of Will circa
though his obituary said he was a
1920.
local grocer, records of the time
show that he also had a wholesale license to sell liquor.
Mary Elizabeth was pregnant at the time and bore a fourth child who died. She later remarried and had four more children with her second husband, George W. H. Watts. Mamie’s brother Oliver “Ollie” Murry, half-sisters Grace Watts Syer and Virginia “Jenny” Watts Davis, Ollie’s daughter Margaret Murry Holland and Jenny’s children Grace and George Davis were the family members most known to Will’s children.
Murray Leinster Page 2