54 “Testimony of Robert W. Williams (colored),” Relations between Labor and Capital, 4:617.
55 “Testimony of John Hill,” ibid., 4:588.
56 “Testimony of Preston Brooks Peters (colored),” ibid., 4:569.
57 Turner et al., Travels through Troup County, 12.
58 Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929), 123.
59 Twice in the early 1880s, “vicious” and “frightening” cyclones or tornadoes swept across Harris County, causing considerable destruction and even death. See “Swept Over by Cyclones: Buildings Blown Down and Many Persons Killed and Injured,” New York Times, Apr. 16, 1884, 5; “A Cyclone in South Georgia,” New York Times, Feb. 27, 1887, 10. Smallpox swept through the county in 1884. See “Quarantined against Small-Pox,” New York Times, June 30, 1884, 1.
60 Ada Copeland’s great-granddaughter Patricia Chacon recalls hearing no stories about Copeland’s Georgia girlhood either directly from Copeland herself or from Copeland’s children and grandchildren. Personal communication to author, Wilmington, NC, June 20, 2006.
61 Marcy Sarah Sacks, “ ‘We Cry among the Skyscrapers’: Black People in New York City, 1880- 1915” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1999), 21.
62 “Testimony of Tony Jenkins (colored),” in Relations between Labor and Capital, 4:635.
63 Sacks, “ ‘We Cry,’ ” 29.
64 The digitization of census records makes such calculations about the origins of large numbers of people much simpler. Using the databases accessible at Ancestry.com, for example, one can describe the makeup of Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s black and mulatto communities by conducting a search using both race and birthplace as variables.
65 “The Slaves of New York City,” La Grange Reporter, Mar. 19, 1869, 2.
66 “An Exodus Movement,” La Grange Reporter, Aug. 17, 1879; “The Exodus in Northeast Alabama,” La Grange Reporter, Sept. 4, 1879. For a general overview of the Exoduster movement, see Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York: Knopf, 1977).
67 Ada’s son Wallace King supplied this information on her death certificate.
68 J. Wesley Hoffman, “Facts from Georgia,” New York Age, Jan. 5, 1889, 2.
69 “Testimony of Tony Jenkins (colored),” in Relations between Labor and Capital, 4:637.
70 See Charles S. Mangum Jr., The Legal Status of the Negro (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940), 215-17. Although Mangum cites segregation laws stemming mainly from the 1920s, he suggests that practice likely followed the older established rules for segregation on railroad cars. He also cites (p. 204) the ruling of Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U.S. 485 (1877), which held in a case involving a Louisiana steamboat that the state civil rights acts enacted during Reconstruction prohibiting discrimination on public carriers were invalid with regard to interstate travelers.
71 Alexander Walters, My Life and Work (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1917), 53.
72 Henry Hugh Proctor, Between Black and White, 133-34. For an overview of black life in New York City during this relatively understudied time period, see Marcy S. Sacks, Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City before World War I (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
73 Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Sport of the Gods (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1902), 81-82.
74 Ada identified “Annie Purnell” as her aunt in court testimony given more than forty years later (see King v. Peabody et al., file no. 26821-1931, Records of the New York County Clerk’s Office, Supreme Court of the State of New York, and below, chap. 10) and stated that in 1888 her aunt lived at 149 West Twenty-fourth Street. Trow’s New York City Directory for the years 1882-89 records Purnell’s move from 26 Minetta Lane to the West Twenty-fourth Street address. The directory entries note that she is the widow of John, and the 1887 entry identifies her profession as “washing.” Annie Purnell’s precise relationship to Ada is unclear. The loss of the 1890 census records in a disastrous fire in 1921 makes it difficult to know, with any assurance, which of the other people of that name living in New York either earlier or later might have been Ada’s relative.
75 For the tenants of Purnell’s building in 1880, see 1880 U.S. Federal Census, City of New York, County of New York, State of New York, SD 1, ED 343, 23-24. On the use of racial terms in the census, see below, 213, 264.
76 See the entry in Trow’s New York City Directory for the Year Ending May 1, 1888 (New York: Trow City Directory Company, 1888), 1595.
77 “Situations Wanted,” New York Times, Jan. 5, 1886, 6.
78 Again, the digitization of the census records on such sites as Ancestry.com makes it possible to quickly scan the 1880 records to search for the living situations of Georgia-born blacks in the greater New York area. The New York Age, the city’s preeminent paper for the black community, lends a more qualitative note to a quantitative story. It published a brief article on Mar. 30, 1889 (p. 3), about Georgia-born Jane Mitchell, who was found dead in her bed in her Seventh Avenue apartment. She was buried by her “Georgia friends,” and the public administrator took charge of her effects in the absence of any kin.
79 Sacks, “ ‘We Cry,’ ” 34-35.
80 “Situations Wanted: Female,” New York Times, Mar. 1, 1886, 6.
81 “Widow Tells of Ceremony and Children,” Amsterdam News, Nov. 22, 1933, 2.
82 Wilkins, King, 358.
83 Mary White Ovington, Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York (1911; repr., New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 149; Isabel Eaton, “Special Report on Domestic Service,” in W. E. B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899; repr., New York: Benjamin Blom, 1967), 427.
84 Jessie Redmon Fauset, Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1929), 27-28.
85 Eaton, “Special Report,” 452-54.
86 Lucy Maynard Salmon, Domestic Service (New York: Macmillan, 1897), 96; Eaton, “Special Report,” 452; “Facts from Georgia,” New York Age, Jan. 5, 1889, 2. On field wages around Harris County in the 1880s, see “Testimony of W. H. Spencer (colored),” Relations between Labor and Capital, 4:5.
87 “Testimony of Mrs. M. W. Farrer,” Relations between Labor and Capital, 2: 643.
88 Eaton, “Special Report,” 468.
89 Department of Commerce, Negro Population, 156.
90 Salmon, Domestic Service, 286, 144, 97.
91 Eaton, “Special Report,” 467. See also Daniel E. Sutherland, Americans and Their Servants: Domestic Service in the United States from 1800 to 1920 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 114-17.
92 Ovington, Half a Man, 151.
93 Eaton (p. 470) found that in her sample group of black women domestic workers in Philadelphia, 66 percent said they turned to their church for recreational activities. She estimated that many of those who reported that they spent most of their leisure time at home also relied on church programs, bringing the total number of women involved in church affairs during their leisure time to 93.2 percent.
94 DuBois, Philadelphia Negro, 201.
95 James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan (1930 ; repr., New York: Knopf, 1940), 165.
96 For a history of this strain of Methodism, see Lewis V. Baldwin, “Invisible” Strands in African Methodism: A History of the African Union Methodist Protestant and Union American Methodist Episcopal Churches, 1805-1980 (Metuchen, NJ: American Theological Library Association and the Scarecrow Press, 1983), and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Religious Bodies: 1906 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1910), 444-46.
97 Baldwin, “Invisible” Strands, 92-95, 111-19.
98 Department of the Interior, Census Office, Report on Statistics of Churches in the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1894), 48, 542.
99 Knowledge of Ada’s church membership comes from her reference to her minister in King v. Peabody et al. Records from the church itself do not seem to have survived. On the church activities, see,
for example, the ads for “A Dramatic Cantata,” New York Age, Mar. 10, 1888, 3; “Third Re-Union,” New York Age, Feb. 16, 1889, 13; “The Union A.M.E. Church,” New York Age, Aug. 4, 1888.
100 Easter Jackson, interview included in “Born in Slavery,” LC.
101 On religion in Troup and Harris counties during Reconstruction, see Barfield, History of Harris County, and Forrest Clark Johnson III, Histories of LaGrange and Troup County, GA: A History of LaGrange, Georgia, 1828-1900, vol. 1 (LaGrange: Family Tree, 1987).
102 DuBois, Philadelphia Negro, 204.
103 “Bishop James H. Cook,” New York Times, Aug. 12, 1899, 7. Ada King refers to Cook as her pastor in the later court testimony reported in “Sues Gardiner Estate,” New York Times, Nov. 21, 1933.
104 On the doctrine of the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church, see Baldwin, “Invisible” Strands, passim.
105 [Ida B. Wells], “The Model Woman: A Pen Picture of the Typical Southern Girl,” New York Freeman, Feb. 18, 1888, reprinted in Miriam Decosta-Willis, The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells: An Intimate Portrait of the Activist as a Young Woman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 188-89.
106 Ada’s great-granddaughter Patricia Chacon, personal communication to author, Wilmington, NC, June 20, 2006.
107 Little scholarly work has been done on the lives of African American women in late-nineteenth-century New York, and the field remains ripe for further research. Kathy Peiss’s book Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) offers an excellent model for investigating women’s lives but largely ignores the experiences of African Americans. Tera W. Hunter’s To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997) focuses on Atlanta and suggests how rich a comparable study might be of black women’s lives in a northern city. Marcy S. Sacks’s Before Harlem concerns itself with a broad range of issues beyond gender but introduces the reader to the range of sources that might support a more focused investigation of this little-studied period.
CHAPTER 4: KING OF THE CITY
1 Bancroft letter quoted in George Wharton James, “Clarence King,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 81, no. 6 (Oct. 1923): 36.
2 Adams, Education, 313.
3 Wilkins, King, 215-16.
4 Ibid., 206-20.
5 Ibid., 209.
6 JH to CK, 18 June 1870, Hay Collection, Brown.
7 On Hay, see O’Toole, Five of Hearts; Tyler Dennett, John Hay: From Poetry to Politics (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1933); Kenton J. Clymer, John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975). Hay’s life merits a full new biographical study. Hay’s book Castilian Days was published by James Osgood, the same publisher who issued King’s Mountaineering the following year.
8 O’Toole, Five of Hearts, 38.
9 Hay, “Clarence King,” in Hague, Memoirs, 131.
10 King, “Catastrophism and Evolution,” 470.
11 The debate continues. Geologist James Gregory Moore argues in King of the 40th Parallel (2006) that recent thought has swung toward a general acceptance of some of King’s catastrophist views. “For example, it is well accepted that major meteoritic impacts and episodes of massive volcanism have assaulted the Earth across the eons with catastrophic results, thus shaping and accelerating physical and biologic evolution. Many of these catastrophes have been shown to occur at the boundaries of the great geologic eras and periods, boundaries that were originally discovered and defined because they marked the time that major extinctions and changes occurred in plant and animal life” (p. 269).
12 Goetzmann, Exploration and Empire, 464. For a more recent evaluation of King’s science, see Kenneth R. Aalto, “Clarence King’s Geology,” Earth Sciences History 23 (2004): 9-31.
13 CK to Marcus Benjamin, 21 Aug. 1887, record unit 7085, box 3, folder 14 “King, Clarence,” Marcus Benjamin Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives; letter quoted in Clifford M. Nelson, “King, Clarence (Rivers),” in New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Noretta Koertge (Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2008), 4:120.
14 On the history of the United States Geological Survey, see Mary C. Rabbitt, The United States Geological Survey, 1879-1989 (U.S. Geological Survey Circular 1050, 1989); Nelson and Rabbitt, “The Role of Clarence King,” in Leviton, Frontiers of Geological Exploration; Clifford M. Nelson, “Clarence Rivers King (1842-1901),” in The History of Science in the United States: An Encyclopedia, ed. Marc Rothenberg (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2001), 300-301. The most comprehensive history of the agency remains Mary C. Rabbitt, Mineral, Lands, and Geology for the Common Defence and General Welfare, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1979-86).
15 U.S. Statutes at Large 20 (1879): 394, quoted in Nelson and Rabbitt, “The Role of Clarence King,” in Leviton, Frontiers of Geological Exploration, 32.
16 “Confirming and Rejecting,” Washington Post, Apr. 4, 1879, 1.
17 [James D. Hague], “Biographical Sketch of Clarence King,” typescript, 8, A1, King Papers, HEH.
18 Bronson, Reminiscences, 356.
19 Johnson, Along This Way, 49.
20 Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “slumming.”
21 Bronson, Reminiscences, 326-27.
22 Ibid., 356.
23 On the electrification of New York, see Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1059-68.
24 For an interesting exploration of the night as a space with parallels to the frontier, see Murray Melbin, Night as Frontier: Colonizing the World after Dark (New York: Free Press, 1987). Thanks to Jean-Christophe Agnew for suggesting this book.
25 Norman Mailer, The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster (repr., San Francisco: City Light Books, n.d.), [3]. Originally published in Dissent (1957).
26 Wilkins, King, 269-92; Nelson and Rabbitt, “The Role of Clarence King,” in Leviton, Frontiers of Geological Exploration, 32-33.
27 For an illuminating and lively account of King’s Washington circle, see O’Toole, Five of Hearts. My account of the group is informed by O’Tooles’ excellent research. Her reference to the James story is on p. 72.
28 For the source of the group’s name, see ibid., xvi.
29 Ibid., 69, for a photograph of the tea service.
30 Henry Adams [Frances Snow Compton, pseud.], with an introduction by Robert E. Spiller, Esther: A Novel (1884 ; repr., New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1938), 19.
31 JH to Clover Adams, 14 Nov. 1881, Ms. 1146, Autograph Collection, Letters to Henry Adams, box 10, Theodore F. Dwight Papers, 1668-1915, Massachusetts Historical Society (hereafter MHS). Citation courtesy of Natalie Dykstra.
32 The best account of King’s complicated mining ventures is in Wilkins, King, esp. chap. 16.
33 “Clarence King’s Resignation,” New York Times, Mar. 16, 1881, 4 ; Rabbitt, Minerals, Lands, and Geology, 2:54.
34 Wilkins, King, 308.
35 Ibid., 308-11.
36 JH to Clover Adams, 14 Nov. 1881, Dwight Papers, MHS.
37 “In Trust,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jan. 10, 1882, 4; “Secret Trust,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 22, 1884, 4; Van Cott v. Prentice and others. Monetary calculations made with the help of www.measuringworth.com.
38 Van Cott v. Prentice and others. In 1887 the New York State Court of Appeals made a final ruling in Mrs. Howland’s favor, agreeing that Prentice clearly intended the interest to go to the Howland family until the youngest child, George, reached legal age, at which point Mrs. Howland and the children should receive the principal of the trust. But it had diminished over the years, and Mrs. Howland’s efforts to hold Prentice’s executors responsible for the management of the funds failed.
39 FKH to JH, 1882, quoted in O’Toole, Five of Hearts, 109.
40 FKH to JTG, 8 May 1881, Gardiner Collection, NYSL.
41 Ste
dman, “Frolic,” in Hague, Memoirs, 203-5.
42 For an excellent overview of King’s time in Europe, see Wilkins, King, 312-35.
43 Clarence King, “The Helmet of Mambrino,” Century Illustrated Magazine 32 (May 1886): 154-59.
44 Royal Cortissoz, The Life of Whitelaw Reid (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1921), 2:86, cited in Wilkins, King, 327.
45 Hay, “Clarence King,” in Hague, Memoirs, 129-30.
46 Ibid., 124-25.
47 Wilkins, King, 317-25.
48 Stedman, “Frolic,” in Hague, Memoirs, 207.
49 Howells, “Meetings with Clarence King,” in Hague, Memoirs, 143-44.
50 Ibid., 144.
51 “Sanctum Chat,” Saturday Evening Post, May 31, 1884, 8.
52 See Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 14-15, 187-88.
53 John Baker Hopkins, “Lazarus to Dives,” Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature (Feb. 1887): 263.
54 Quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: The Treacherous Years: 1895-1901 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1969), 237.
55 Ibid., 237-38; George Monteiro, Henry James and John Hay: The Record of a Friendship (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1965), 98.
56 Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague, Memoirs, 369.
57 Hay, “Clarence King,” in Hague, Memoirs, 123.
58 F. H. Mason to JH, 1 Sept. [1883], cited in Wilkins, King, 320.
59 Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague, Memoirs, 369-70.
60 Hon. Maude Stanley, “Country Holidays for Working Girls,” Outlook 63, no. 6 (Oct. 7, 1899): 346.
61 F. H. Mason to JH, 18 Jan. 1884, cited in Wilkins, King, 321n.
62 Bronson, Reminiscences, 354; Henry James to JH, 13 May [1885], cited in Phillip Horne, ed., Henry James: A Life in Letters (London: Penguin, 1999), 176.
63 F. H. Mason to JH, 18 Jan. 1884, cited in Wilkins, King, 321n.
64 Ibid.
65 Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague, Memoirs, 370.
66 Wilkins, King, 325-26, 333-34.
67 CK to “Haig,” 27 June 1884, A1, King Papers, HEH.
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