Passing Strange

by Martha A. Sandweiss

  I began this book during a sabbatical year in 2004-5 as the Frederick W. Beinecke Senior Fellow in Western Americana at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. There could be no better place to work, and I am particularly grateful to George Miles, the library’s curator of Western Americana, for his longtime friendship and support. My gratitude extends to the entire Beinecke staff, especially Frank Turner and Una Belau. The Beinecke Fellowship also gave me a connection at Yale to the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders, where Johnny Faragher, Jay Gitlin, and Edith Rotkopf served as my hosts, and I engaged in many useful conversations about this work with Lamar Center fellow Barbara Berglund. At Yale I also benefited from conversations with Jean-Christophe Agnew, Glenda Gilmore, Howard Lamar, Joanne Meyerowitz, David Musto, and Laura Wexler.

  A research grant from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History helped jump-start my research in New York City archives, and a visiting fellow’s connection to the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale helped facilitate my access to other resources. I thank the center’s director, David Blight, for his helpful comments on several portions of this manuscript.

  Everyone who teaches at Amherst College has reason to be grateful for the school’s generous support of faculty scholarship, through the acquisition of library resources as well as through more direct financial support. I am deeply indebted to the wonderful staff of the Frost Library who patiently and generously responded to my many acquisition requests and research queries, and I extend particular thanks to Susan Edwards for her help with my many questions about the federal census. Amherst also offered me financial support in the form of a senior sabbatical fellowship and a grant from the Amherst College Faculty Research Award Program, as funded by the H. Axel Schupf ’57 Fund for Intellectual Life.

  A fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation provided a glorious month at the foundation’s Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, where I drafted the final portions of this manuscript. I am grateful to Pilar Palacia and Elena Ongania for facilitating my stay, and to all of my fellow residents—particularly Susan Crile, Mary Brown Bullock, Brad Leithauser, and Mary Jo Salter—for their stimulating thoughts about my project.

  I have also benefited from the comments of colleagues who offered feedback on earlier presentations of this work at the Gilder Lehrman Center brown-bag lunch series and the Lamar Center lecture program at Yale, the American History Workshop at New York University, and the City Seminar program at Columbia University, where Ken Cobb offered particularly useful suggestions. Colleagues also offered helpful advice in an Amherst College faculty work-in-progress seminar, and there I thank Martha Umphrey, Marisa Parham, and Rhonda Cobham-Sander. To my fellow seminar participants Hilary Moss, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, and Martha Saxton, each of whom read and offered comments on additional parts of this manuscript, I extend particular thanks for their friendship and advice. Several others have read and commented on portions of this book, and for their generosity and thought-provoking questions I extend thanks to Carol Clark, Sage Sohier, Jim Grossman, and Karen Merrill. Along the way, I also benefited from exchanges with other colleagues at Amherst and elsewhere, including Marcy Sacks, Laura Lovett, Margaret Hunt, Bill Taubman, Kim Townsend, Rich Halgin, Nancy McWilliams, Clyde Milner, Carol O’Connor, Natalie Dykstra, James Gregory Moore, and Eric Paddock.

  Ann Fabian, Maria Montoya, and Virginia Scharff—wonderful friends and smart colleagues all—more than once helped me think through many of the pieces of this story, and I am grateful for their generous readings. A few brave souls actually tackled this entire manuscript and provided extensive feedback that much improved the book. Clifford M. Nelson, of the United States Geological Survey, patiently read my entire draft, gently setting me straight on matters relating to King’s professional career. Hugh Hawkins, Dan Koffsky, Daniel Giat, and Martha Hodes also read the entire manuscript, and each took time to give me a careful critique of the work. My readers have all served as reminders that writing is not really the solitary task it so often seems. I have felt buoyed by my team in countless ways.

  Several students provided me with useful research assistance. Caitlin Crowell offered valuable help at Yale, and at Amherst I received assistance from Katie Hudson, Mirza Ali Khan, and especially Mahesha Subbaraman. For additional research help, I am grateful to Adam Sandweiss Horowitz, Isabelle Smeall, James L. Gehrlich, Shawn Alexander, Alan Swedlund, Lewis Baldwin, Ed Townsley, Rodger Andrew, Neilson Abeel, Judith Schiff, Peter Blodgett, Ken Thomas, and Randall Burkett. A special word of thanks goes to Kaye Lanning Minchew and Forrest Clark Johnson III of the Troup County Archives in La Grange, Georgia, for assisting me on a research trip and responding to many subsequent queries.

  My Santa Fe friends have offered moral support, useful feedback, and occasional lodging as I’ve worked on this project, and I send my thanks to David Margolis, Jeannie Moss, Charlene Cerny, Joe Chipman, Carol Mothner, Daniel Morper, Joan Maynard, and Jerry Richardson. A special word of gratitude goes to David Anderson and Phoebe Girard, who provided me with a wonderful writing hideaway as I completed this book.

  My literary agent, Wendy Strothman, has been a good friend and supportive reader since first we met, and I am grateful to her and her associate, Dan O’Connell, for their ongoing help. At The Penguin Press, I received valuable editorial advice from Emily Loose and Scott Moyers, and give special thanks to my editor, Vanessa Mobley, and her assistant, Nicole Hughes, who helped shape this manuscript for publication.

  Fortunate, indeed, is the historian lucky enough to find anyone else equally excited about hunting down the elusive clue. Josh Garrett-Davis, my former student at Amherst College, caught the bug early on and quickly proved an invaluable partner in this project, helping me trace the King family’s movements across the changing landscape of Brooklyn and Queens. While Josh helped me in New York, Lea Dowd and her granddaughter Sarah welcomed me into their Georgia home and became my guides to the landscape of Ada Copeland’s childhood. I thank Lea, too, for taking me with her to a Copeland family homecoming in the summer of 2004; it was a memorable experience for me, and I am grateful to the assembled family members who so patiently indulged this interloper’s requests for stories.

  When I began this project, I never suspected I would meet someone who had known Ada Copeland Todd King; I had not yet discovered that she lived to be 103. But then I found her great-granddaughter, Patricia Chacon. Patty has a trove of valuable family memories, and a keen sense of which might prove most useful to a writer. She and her husband, Edgar, opened up their home to me, and Patty generously shared with me her stories and family snapshots. I am deeply grateful to her for her trust and support, and for her willingness to share her ancestors with a curious outsider like myself.

  In the end, of course, this is a book about a family. So I offer thanks to my children, Adam and Sarah, constant reminders of why family matters. And I dedicate this book to my parents, Joy and Jerry Sandweiss, who first showed me the value and power of familial love.

  Martha A. Sandweiss

  Pelham, Massachusetts

  May 2008

  Notes

  PROLOGUE: AN INVENTED LIFE

  1 On the weather, see “The Weather,” New York Times, June 5, 1900, 1, and June 6, 3. For Edward V. Brown and his work on North Prince Street, see the Twelfth Census of the United States, New York, Queens, SD 2, ED 665, sheet 4, http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/Browse /view.aspx?dbid=7602 & path=New+York.Queens.Queens+Ward+3.665.8 & fn=Ad a&ln=Todd& st=r&pid=56465284&rc=& zp=50 (accessed July 20, 2007). On the racial breakdown of Queens and Brooklyn, see Census Reports, vol. 1, Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1900: Population, Part 1 (Washington, DC: United States Census Office, 1901), 631; for the percentage of foreign-born residents, see p. 669.

  2 John Hay, quoted in Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (c. 1907; repr., Sentry edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), 416; all subseque
nt citations are to the Sentry edition.

  3 Adams, Education, 313.

  4 Defendant’s Exhibit C, Plaintiff ’s Trial Memorandum, Ada King et al. v. George Foster Peabody et al. (file no. 26821-1931; Records of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County Clerk ’s Office), 171 (hereafter King v. Peabody et al.). See also below, pages 235-37.

  CHAPTER 1: BECOMING CLARENCE KING

  1 William Dean Howells, “Meetings with Clarence King,” in Clarence King Memoirs: The Helmet of Mambrino, comp. James D. Hague (New York and London: Published for the King Memorial Committee of the Century Association by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 148.

  2 Adams, Education, 313.

  3 Ibid., 312.

  4 William Crary Brownell, “King at the Century,” in Hague, Memoirs, 215-16.

  5 Clarence King (CK) to James T. Gardiner (JTG), 15 Feb. 1873, Gardiner Collection, New York State Library.

  6 Brownell, “King at the Century,” in Hague, Memoirs, 219.

  7 Edgar Beecher Bronson, Reminiscences of a Ranchman (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1910), 327.

  8 Edmund Clarence Stedman, “King—‘The Frolic and the Gentle,’ ” in Hague, Memoirs, 201.

  9 Howells, “Meetings with Clarence King,” in Hague, Memoirs, 142.

  10 Stedman, “Frolic,” in Hague, Memoirs, 209.

  11 Brownell, “King at the Century,” in Hague, Memoirs, 218.

  12 Edward Cary, “King’s ‘Mountaineering,’ ” in Hague, Memoirs, 235.

  13 Brownell, “King at the Century,” in Hague, Memoirs, 219.

  14 John Hay, “Clarence King,” in Hague, Memoirs, 125-26.

  15 Brownell, “King at the Century,” in Hague, Memoirs, 221.

  16 Ibid., 223.

  17 Edward Cary, “Century Necrological Note,” in Hague, Memoirs, 236.

  18 On King’s paternal ancestors, see Samuel Franklin Emmons, “Clarence King—Geologist,” in Hague, Memoirs, 255-58; Thurman Wilkins, Clarence King: A Biography, rev. and enlarged ed., with the help of Caroline Lawson Hinkley (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 6-14; Jacques M. Downs, The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784-1844 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1997), 198-209, 369. See also Samuel Franklin Emmons, “Clarence King—Memoranda,” box 35, S. F. Emmons Papers, Manuscript Division (hereafter Ms. Div.), Library of Congress (hereafter LC); and Rufus King, “Pedigree of King, of Lynn, Essex County, Mass.: 1602-1891” [printed genealogical chart], King Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA (hereafter HEH). The Wilkins biography remains the best source for the details of King’s youth and professional life, and I am indebted to it throughout.

  19 On Samuel ’s breakdown, see Downs, Golden Ghetto, 199. See also Wilkins, King, 9.

  20 In “Senate of the United States. February 19, 1839. Submitted by Mr. Robbins . . . Senate Committee of the Joint Committee on the Smithsonian Institution,” 25th Cong., 3rd sess., S. Doc. 234, serial set 340, session 3; Marlana Portolano, “Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge: Ethos of Science and Education in the Smithsonian’s Inception,” Rhetoric Review 18, no. 1 (Autumn 1999): 65-81. Although the Smithsonian Institution ultimately emphasized museum exhibition over conventional instruction or pure research, Robbins helped shape its broader educational mission.

  21 See Emmons, “Clarence King—Memoranda,” S. F. Emmons Papers, LC; Wilkins, King, 8-13; Emmons, “Clarence King—Geologist,” in Hague, Memoirs, 258-59. Sophia Little’s abolitionist activities and involvement with the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society can be traced through accounts in the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper during the years 1848-52. Julie Roy Jeffrey makes passing mention of Little’s views on the antislavery movement and religion in The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 145-54. Little’s own books include The Birth, Last Days, and Resurrection of Jesus. Three Poems (1841), Thrice through the Furnace: A Tale of the Times of the Iron Hoof (1852), The Reveille, or, Our Music at Dawn (1854), and Pentecost (1869). Emmons alludes to King’s “rapid diction” in “Clarence King—Memoranda,” [51], S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.

  22 Wilkins, King, 9; Florence King Howland (FKH) to S. F. Emmons, 24 Feb. 1902, box 13, S. F. Emmons Papers, Ms. Div., LC.

  23 James D. Hague, “Memorabilia,” in Hague, Memoirs, 406.

  24 Bronson, Reminiscences, 333.

  25 FKH to S. F. Emmons, 17 Jan. 1902, cited in Wilkins, King, 14. In later years, Florence King Howland recalled it as her twenty-second birthday.

  26 Rossiter W. Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague, Memoirs, 305.

  27 Daniel C. Gilman, “Clarence King’s School-days,” in Hague, Memoirs, 297.

  28 FKH to C. W. Howard, 17 Jan. 1902, cited in Wilkins, King, 18n.

  29 Clarence King, “Camp Forester, West Brattleboro, VT. 1859,” A2, “Notebooks, Private,” King Papers, HEH.

  30 A Chinese phrase book by George L. Shaw is in A2, King Papers, HEH; see also Bronson, Reminiscences, 332.

  31 The Asian art was sold at auction with the books from King’s estate. See the advertisement for the American Art Galleries, New York Times, Mar. 7, 1903, 5.

  32 Bronson, Reminiscences, 333.

  33 Ibid., 338.

  34 [ J. T. Gardiner], “Clarence King’s Boyhood,” 2, box 2, A3, King Papers, HEH. This typescript reminiscence appears to be a joint production of King’s friends James T. Gardiner, R. W. Raymond, James D. Hague, and S. F. Emmons. Although the authorship of different sections is not always clear, Gardiner’s contributions are obvious, as he was the only one of the authors to have known King as a youth. See R. W. Raymond to James D. Hague, 17 Jan. 1902, 11 Feb. 1902, and 19 Feb. 1902; James D. Hague to R. W. Raymond, 19 Feb. 1902, box 2, A3, King Papers, HEH. Thanks to Peter Blodgett, H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western Historical Manuscripts, Huntington Library, for his assistance in sorting out the attribution of the typescripts.

  35 Emmons, “Clarence King—Geologist,” in Hague, Memoirs, 258-59.

  36 Wilkins, King, 15-17.

  37 See the entry for Clarence and Florence King in 1850 U.S. Federal Census, Town of Pomfret, Windham County, CT, sheet 380, http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=8054 & path = Connecticut.Windham.Pomfret.9 & fn =Wm%20Florence & ln = King& st= r& pid = 18384080 & rc= & zp =50 (accessed Jan. 8, 2006).

  38 FKH to S. F. Emmons, 24 Feb. 1902, box 13, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.

  39 Bronson, Reminiscences, 338.

  40 Emmons, “Clarence King—Memoranda,” [52], S. F. Emmons Papers, LC. The “climate” in Boston proved against them, Emmons wrote.

  41 “Sophia Louisa Little,” in Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 3 (New York: D. Appleton, 1887).

  42 Wilkins, King, 17-19.

  43 [ JTG], “Clarence King’s Boyhood,” 1-2, King Papers, HEH.

  44 Gilman, “Clarence King’s School-days,” in Hague, Memoirs, 297.

  45 Wilkins, King, 20-23.

  46 As a boy, Gardiner spelled his name without an i. He returned to the traditional family spelling of the name later, and for consistency’s sake, I’ve used the later spelling throughout.

  47 Letter reprinted in A Memorial of Lt. Daniel Perkins Dewey, of the Twenty-Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers (Hartford: Press of Case, Lockwood, 1864), 25.

  48 CK to JTG, Sat. eve., [n.d. 1860], HM 27814, HEH.

  49 Wilkins, King, 25; “Message of the President of the United States, communicating, in compliance with a resolution of the Senate, the instructions to, and dispatches from, the late and present ministers in China,” 36th Cong., 1st sess., S. Ex. Doc. 30 (vol. 1032), 114.

  50 Wilkins, King, 26.

  51 CK to JTG, 2 Oct. 1859, HM 27809, HEH.

  52 CK to John Hay ( JH) [n.d. 1893], John Hay Collection, Brown University Library.

  53 Cited in Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague, Memoirs, 307.<
br />
  54 King, “Camp Forester, West Brattleboro, VT. 1859,” King Papers, HEH.

  55 [JTG], “Clarence King’s Boyhood,” 1, King Papers, HEH.

  56 James Gregory Moore, King of the 40th Parallel: Discovery in the American West (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 10-11.

  57 John Leander Bishop et al., A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 (Philadelphia: Edward Young, 1868), 3:190; Henry R. Stiles, A History of the City of Brooklyn, vol. 3, chap. 12 (Brooklyn, NY: published by subscription, 1867-70), http://search.ancestrylibrary.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=HistBrooklyn123&so=2&rank=0&tips=0&gsfn=george&gsln=howland&sx=&gs1co=2%2cUSA&gs1pl=35%2cNew+York&year=1860& yearend=&sbo=0&sbor=&wp=4%3b_80000002%3b_80000003&prox=1&db=&ti=5542 &ti.si=0&gss=angs-b&o_iid=21416&o_lid=21416&o_it=21416&srchb=p (accessed Aug. 10, 2007).

  58 Wilkins, King, 25-26; “The Arctic. Additional Particulars,” New York Times, Oct. 13, 1854, 1.

  59 FKH to JH, 11 June [1882], cited in Wilkins, King, 29.

  60 Wilkins, King, 29. On John Snowden Howland’s age, see his entry in the 1870 U.S. Federal Census, Third Ward, City of Newport, County of Newport, RI, p. 30, http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/Browse /view.aspx?dbid=7163& path=Rhode+Island.Newport.Newport+Ward+3.30 & fn=Florence%20K& ln=Howland& st=r& pid=9785013& rc= & zp =50 (accessed Jan. 10, 2007).

  61 Clarence King, “Miscellaneous Notes, 1860,” box A2, King Papers, HEH; CK to JTG, 26 Apr. 1860, HM 27812, HEH; Nancy K. Anderson, Ross Merrill, and Michael Skalka, “Albert Bierstadt: A Letter from New York,” Archives of American Art Journal 40, no. 3/4 (2000): 28-31.

  62 CK to JTG, 4 Jan. 1860, HM 27810, HEH.

  63 King documents his churchgoing activities in his small pocket notebook “Miscellaneous Notes, 1860,” King Papers, HEH.

  64 CK to JTG, 20 May 1860, HM 27813, HEH.

  65 CK to JTG, Sat. eve., [n.d. 1860], HEH.

  66 CK to JTG, 25 Mar. [1860], HM 27811, HEH.