Passing Strange

by Martha A. Sandweiss

  2 “Condition of Hudson Avenue,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 1, 1888, 1.

  3 “A City Survey: The Condition of Brooklyn’s Streets and Houses,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 9, 1885, 1.

  4 [Sanborn Map Company Insurance Maps of New York], Atlas 66, New York (City), Brooklyn, vol. 2, 1887, sheet 42, Map Division, New York Public Library.

  5 Craig Steven Wilder, A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 118. On the Navy Yard, see Rand McNally Guide (1895), 195.

  6 “A City Survey,” 1.

  7 See the Sanborn map and “A City Survey,” 1.

  8 See, for example, “A Birthday Social,” New York Age, Jan. 28, 1888, 2; “Brooklyn Briefs,” New York Age, May 19, 1888, 3; and Johnson, Along This Way, 202.

  9 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1068.

  10 “Relief Asked from Alleged Nuisances in Hudson Avenue,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 3, 1891, 4; “No Rioting: The Police Say That Hudson Avenue Is Peaceful,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 7, 1891, 4; “Hudson Avenue at Peace,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 8, 1891, 2.

  11 Johnson, Along This Way, 47.

  12 The Reverend Richard S. Storrs, as quoted in Alan Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol, 2nd ed. (1965; repr., University of Chicago Press, 1979), 124.

  13 “The Traffic of the Cable Railway on the New York and Brooklyn Bridge,” Manufacturer and Builder 21 (Feb. 1889): 32.

  14 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1058.

  15 King is listed as a resident of the Hotel Albert in the “New York City Directory, 1890,” http://search.ancestrylibrary.com /cgi-bin /sse.dll?rank= 0 & gsfn = & gsln=king& gskw=11th& prox=1& db=nyc1890&ti=5542&ti.si=0&gss=angs-d&ct=170103 (accessed Aug. 5, 2007).

  16 “New York City Directory, 1890”; “Hotel Albert” (display ad), New York Times, Apr. 29, 1890, 7; “Death of Albert S. Rosenbaum,” New York Times, Feb. 18, 1894, 7; “Obituary Notes: Arthur P. Yorston,” New York Times, May 1, 1903, 9; “Business Troubles: New York City: Yorston Brothers,” New York Times, Feb. 17, 1898, 5; “Death List of a Day: Gilbert K. Harroun,” New York Times, Sept. 14, 1901, 7; “Western Merchants Organize,” New York Times, Aug. 13, 1889, 2; “Educational Institutions: Miss Minnie Swayze,” New York Times, Aug. 24, 1895, 9; “Is This Another Suicide?” New York Times, Dec. 15, 1890, 1; “Did Not Pay His Hotel Bill,” New York Times, Oct. 19, 1890, 16.

  17 For the relative cost of the Hotel Albert, see Rand McNally Guide (1895), 14-18.

  18 JTG to S. F. Emmons, receipt dated 10 Feb. 1902, box 35, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.

  19 “Mammy Bares Life as Wife of Scientist,” New York Daily News, Nov. 21, 1933, 3.

  20 CK to JH, 12 Aug. [1888], Hay Collection, Brown.

  21 Ibid., 5 Nov. 1888.

  22 King complained about his “densely gouty state” to Hay, ibid., July 1888.

  23 JH to Sir John Clark, 14 May 1887, Letters of John Hay, 2:112.

  24 HA to JH, 4 Aug. 1887, in The Letters of Henry Adams, ed. J. C. Levenson et al. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard, 1982-1988), 3:71.

  25 CK to Clara Stone Hay, 30 Dec. 1887, Hay Collection, Brown.

  26 The possibility of an undiagnosed tubercular infection is raised by King’s later death from pulmonary tuberculosis. On spinal TB, see Robert F. McLain, M.D., and Carlos Isada, M.D., “Spinal Tuberculosis Deserves a Place on the Radar Screen,” Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine 71, no. 7 ( July 2004): 537-49. Nonetheless, the progression of the disease would seem to be too slow for spinal TB to be the source of his problem.

  27 On pilonidal cysts, see http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/pilonidal-cyst/DS00747/DSECTION=1 (accessed July 19, 2007). Thanks to Dr. Ralph Bransky.

  28 CK to JH, 12 Nov. 1888; CK to JH, n.d. Dec. 1888; Hay Collection, Brown. On the Arlington Hotel, see Ann L. Greene, “The Arlington Hotel: An Arkansas Institution, 1875-1945,” The Record (Garland County Historical Society, 1996): 1-22 (citation courtesy of Wendy Richter).

  29 HA to JH, 1 June 1889, Letters of Henry Adams, 3:177-78; CK to JH, 2 Oct. 1889, Hay Collection, Brown; JH to HA, 21 Sept. 1889, Letters of John Hay, 2:176; HA to Lucy Baxter, 10 Oct. 1889, Letters of Henry Adams, 3:202; HA to Sir Robert Cunliffe, 20 Oct. 1889, Letters of Henry Adams, 3:204 ; JH to HA, 22 Oct. 1889, Letters of John Hay, 2:180-81.

  30 JH to Sir John Clark, 14 May 1887, Letters of John Hay, 2:113.

  31 CK to JH, 2 Oct. 1889, Hay Collection, Brown.

  32 I have been unable to locate a copy of Leroy’s birth certificate. His date of birth is roughly affirmed by the confirmed date of birth for the Todds’ second child in January 1891. Ada refers to Leroy in “Mammy Bares Life,” 3-4.

  33 CK to HA, 25 Sept. 1889, cited in Wilkins, King, 366.

  34 JTG to S. F. Emmons, receipt dated 10 Feb. 1902.

  35 CK to JH, 2 Mar. 1890, Hay Collection, Brown.

  36 On George S. Howland’s life and career as a painter, see Quarter Centenary Record of the Class of 1888: Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University, comp. Percey F. Smith (New Haven, CT: Printed for the class, 1915), 114; Edward S. Moore, comp., Forty-Year Book of the Class of 1888: Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University (New Haven, CT: Printed for the class, 1929), 82-87; Edward F. R. Wood Jr., Old Mattapoisett: A Summer Portrait (Mattapoisett, MA: Quadequina Publishers, 1995), 156-59; “George Howland Dies at French Resort,” New York Times, Sept. 16, 1928, 37. Howland moved to France in the mid-1890s and remained there until his death in 1928. Citations courtesy of Neilson Abeel.

  37 CK to JH, 2 Mar. [1890], Hay Collection, Brown.

  38 JTG to S. F. Emmons, receipt dated 10 Feb. 1902.

  39 JH to William Dean Howells, 30 Jan. 1890, in John Hay-Howells Letters: The Correspondence of John Milton Hay and William Dean Howells, 1861-1905, ed. George Monteiro and Brenda Murphy (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980), 97.

  40 Michael Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 23, 127.

  41 On Hay and race, see Kenton J. Clymer, John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975), 65-91.

  42 See O’Toole, Five of Hearts, 217-20.

  43 CK to JH, 16 Oct. 1890, Hay Collection, Brown.

  44 JH to HA, 30 Dec. 1890, Letters of John Hay, 2:208.

  45 Ibid.

  46 For Alexander Lancaster’s birth date, see 1900 U.S. Federal Census, Bronx Borough, New York County, NY, SD 1, ED 1057, sheet 1, http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/iexec/default.aspx?htx=View&r=5542&dbid=7602&iid=NYT623_1128-0158&fn=Alexander&ln=Lancaster&st=r&ssrc= & pid= 45366684 (accessed Aug. 15, 2007).

  47 Wilkins, King, 405.

  48 Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague, Memoirs, 347.

  49 Ibid.

  50 Wilkins, King, 382-83.

  51 Raymond, “Biographical Notice,” in Hague, Memoirs, 349.

  52 CK to JH, Dec. 1890, Hay Collection, Brown.

  53 Official Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. (June 1887), 4 ; “Indian Wars Campaigns That the 4th U.S. Artillery Participated in, 1870-1881,” http://www.batteryb.com/officersofthe4thartillery/battles-indians.html (accessed Aug. 24, 2004); Newport, Rhode Island, 1890 (Newport: Sampson, Murdock, 1890).

  54 “Newport Improvements,” New York Times, Jan. 11, 1891, 14.

  55 FKH to Clara Hay, 6 July 1890, cited in O’Toole, Five of Hearts, 259.

  56 CK to JH [ Jan. 1891], Hay Collection, Brown.

  57 “Down Fell Pole and Wire: Destructive Work of Saturday Night’s Big Storm,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 1891, 1.

  58 Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 1066-68.

  59 Certificate of Birth, Brooklyn. 920 for _____ Todd, 24 Jan. 1891, New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Municipal Archives. On P. E. Kidd, see 1900 U.S. Federal Census, Borough of Brooklyn, Kings County, NY, SD 2, ED 120, sheet 1, http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/Browse /view
.aspx?dbid=7602 & path=New+York.Kings.Brooklyn+ Ward+9.120.1& fn=P%20Edwin& ln=Kidd& st=r& pid= 48483451& rc= & zp =50 (accessed Aug. 15, 2007).

  60 Wm. M. Lively, M.D., “Medical Union Needed,” New York Age, Feb. 16, 1889, 4.

  61 JH to HA, 20 Jan. 1891, Letters of John Hay, 2:213. King was in Newport later in February, along with the other “Summer residents” who gathered then to help make arrangements for the summer season. “Getting Ready for Summer: Newport Putting Itself in Shape for the Coming Season,” New York Times, Mar. 1, 1891, 17.

  62 As discussed in chapter 3, it is difficult to ascertain which Ada Copeland in the 1870 Georgia census might actually be the young Ada Todd, and no likely candidates appear in the 1880 census. Nonetheless, even if Ada appears in these records, we might imagine that the census agents obtained their information about her from someone else living in the household. Ada likely spoke to the federal census taker who called on her Hudson Avenue apartment in 1890, but that information disappeared in the fire that destroyed most of the 1890 census records. And if she spoke to an official record keeper on the occasion of Leroy’s birth, those records cannot be found. Hence her daughter’s birth certificate becomes the earliest account of Ada’s own life, in her own words.

  63 Certificate of Birth, Brooklyn. 920 for _____ Todd, 24 Jan. 1891.

  64 JH to HA, 6 Jan. 1892, Letters of John Hay, 2:234; CK to JH, May 1891, Hay Collection, Brown.

  65 “Dinner to General Greene,” New York Times, May 6, 1891, 5; “Cottagers at Newport,” New York Times, June 21, 1891, 13.

  66 CK to JH, Dec. 1890, Hay Collection, Brown.

  67 Ibid., [n.d. 1891].

  68 Ibid.

  69 I infer the timing of the family’s move from Certificate of Birth, Brooklyn. 998, for Ada Todd, who was born at 72 Skillman Street on Jan. 31, 1892 (New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Municipal Archives). Ada’s older sister, Grace, was born fifty-three weeks earlier at the Hudson Avenue house. On the geography of Brooklyn’s black community, see Scheiner, Negro Mecca, 23-24.

  70 Scheiner, Negro Mecca, 34.

  71 CK to JH, May 1891, Hay Collection, Brown. The loan is dated Apr. 20, 1891, in JTG to S. F. Emmons, receipt dated 10 Feb. 1902.

  72 JH to HA, 4 June 1891, Letters of John Hay, 2:221.

  73 CK to Mrs. Hay [July 1891], reel 8, Hay Collection, Mss. Div., LC.

  74 See the street maps, including 72 Skillman Street, in [Sanborn Map Company Insurance Maps of New York], Atlas 69, vol. 3, 1887, sheet 64, and Atlas 70, vol. 3, 1904, sheet 55, Map Division, New York Public Library.

  75 “72 Skillman Street,” in “Brooklyn, New York Directories, 1888-1890,” http://search.ancestrylibrary.com /cgi-bin /sse.dll? rank= 0 & f 0 = & f4 = & f 5 = & gsk w =72 + skillman & prox=1& db=1890brookny&ti=5542&ti.si=0&gl=&gss=mp-1890brookny&gst=&so=3 (accessed Feb. 2, 2005).

  76 Johnson, Along This Way, 48.

  77 Congrès Géologique International, Compte rendu de la 5me session, Washington, 1891 (Washington: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1893). Thanks to Clifford M. Nelson for bringing to my attention this published volume, which includes lists of the conference attendees and accounts of the proceedings.

  78 CK to JH, 8 Sept. [1891], Hay Collection, Brown. It is not entirely clear who “Augusta” might have been. An Augusta Riley appears in the Newport federal census records for 1880 and 1900 (the 1890 records are missing), recorded as “black” and designated first as a laundress and later as a cook. One record describes her as Maryland born, the other as from Virginia. See 1880 U.S. Federal Census, Newport, RI, SD 121, ED 94, http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/iexec/?ht x=V iew & r=5542 & dbid = 6742 & iid = RIT9_1210 - 0 415 & fn = Aug usta & ln = R i ley & st= r& ssrc=&pid=16507663, and 1900 U.S. Federal Census, Newport, RI, Ward 4, ED 221, sheet 8, http://content.ancestrylibrary.com/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=7602&path= R hode +Island .Newport.Newport+Ward+4.221.16&fn=Augusta&ln=Riley&st=r&pid=69137131&rc= &zp=50 (both accessed July 15, 2007).

  79 John Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City, 1866-1966 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1974), 212. On the efforts of the New York Health Department during the early 1890s to assure the safety of the milk supply, see ibid., 132-36.

  80 Sacks, “ ‘We Cry,’ ” 233.

  81 JH to HA, 6 Jan. 1892, Letters of John Hay, 2:234.

  82 Certificate of Birth, Brooklyn. 998, for Ada Todd, Feb. 1, 1892 (filing date), New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Municipal Archives.

  83 CK to JH, Jan. 1892, Hay Collection, Brown.

  84 Ibid., 25 Jan. 1892; n.d. Feb. 1892; 9 Feb. 1892.

  85 New York Freeman, Sept. 11, 1886, cited in Scheiner, Negro Mecca, 163.

  86 CK to William Brewer, 15 May [1892], HM 27833, HEH.

  87 William H. Brewer, “Heredity: Race Crossing,” speech delivered Nov. 1, 1879, to the Social Science Club, Brewer Papers, Yale.

  88 Brewer’s response to King cannot be found, and no references to King’s letter can be located in the Brewer Papers.

  89 CK to JH, 28 May 1892, Hay Collection, Brown.

  90 Ibid., 10 July 1892.

  91 Ibid., 30 July 1892.

  92 Ibid., 14 Oct. 1892.

  93 Although none of the actual letters are known to survive, some of them were read out loud in court when Ada King pressed her claims for King’s estate in 1933. Both court reporters and newspaper reporters avidly transcribed the words. See below, chapter 10.

  94 “White Scientist’s Love Letters to Colored Wife Are Bared in Court,” Pittsburgh Courier, Dec. 2, 1933, sec. 1, 5.

  95 “Scientist’s Letters Reveal His Love for Colored Wife,” New York Daily News, Nov. 22, 1933, 3.

  96 The letter King wrote from his deathbed instructing Ada in how to address his letters (see Defendant’s Exhibit C, Plaintiff ’s Trial Memorandum, 171, in King v. Peabody et al., file no. 26821=1931; Records of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County Clerk’s Office) suggests that she had heretofore been writing to him under his alias.

  97 JH to HA, 25 Nov. 1892, Letters of John Hay, 2:249. Evidence for his visit with Ada comes from the estimated date of conception for their son Sidney, who was born on July 19, 1893.

  98 Adams, Education, 321, 325.

  99 Ibid., 328.

  100 HA to JH, 5 Nov. 1893, Letters of Henry Adams, 4:138.

  101 R. Hal Williams, Years of Decision: American Politics in the 1890s (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978), 76-77.

  102 Junius Henri Browne, “The Bread and Butter Question,” Harper’s Monthly 88 (Dec. 1893): 278, cited in Dunlop, Gilded City, 134.

  103 Chicago Daily Tribune, Mar. 15, 1893, 4; “Dined by Whitelaw Reid,” New York Times, June 2, 1893, 5; “A Newport Society Feast,” Washington Post, Aug. 18, 1893, 5.

  104 Wilkins, King, 353, 386-87.

  105 Certificate of Birth, Brooklyn. 8698, 21 July 1893 (filing date) New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Municipal Archives. The 1880 U.S. Federal Census for Brooklyn, King’s County, NY, SD 2, ED 193, p. 24, notes that Samuel Stiles was then working at the Brooklyn Homeopathic Hospital. By 1890, reported the Brooklyn, New York Directory for 1890-91 (Brooklyn: Lain, 1890), he was in practice at 51 Greene Avenue, with that rare new commodity... a telephone. For more on Stiles, who was an ardent genealogist, see “Samuel Edward Stiles, M.D.,” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 33, no. 1 ( Jan. 1902): 5.

  106 Sidney’s middle initial is noted on his death certificate. See New York State Department of Health Certificate of Death, 42437, for Sidney C. King (10 July 1942), New York State Department of Health, Vital Records Section, Albany.

  107 “A Newport Society Feast”; “His Mind Unbalanced: Clarence King Taken to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum,” New York Daily Tribune, 4 Nov. 1893, 7.

  108 CK to S. F. Emmons, 23 Oct. 1893, box 11, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.

  109 Defendant’s Exhibit L, Plaintiff’s Trial Memorandum, 162. This letter is undated. My placing of it here is conjectural
, based on King’s diminishing economic prospects during the depression of 1893.

  110 CK to S. F. Emmons, 23 Oct. 1893, box 11, S. F. Emmons Papers, LC.

  111 CK to JH, [1893], Hay Collection, Brown.

  CHAPTER 7: BREAKDOWNS

  1 Chicago Tribune, Nov. 4, 1893, 3. See also Washington Post, Nov. 5, 1893, 4.

  2 The comment on the Menagerie’s popularity comes from Mabel Parsons; ed., Memories of Samuel Parsons: Landscape Architect of Public Parks, New York (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1926), 67. On the animals, see Rand McNally Guide (1895), 64-65, and on the animal-rights issue, see Dunlop, Gilded City, 251-52. On the Irish names, see “No More Offensive Names,” New York Times, Apr. 21, 1893, 9. For the weather report, see “Hudnut’s Weather Report,” New York Times, Oct. 30, 1893, 2.

  3 This account of King’s arrest is drawn largely from “Arrested in Central Park: A Man Who Said He Was Clarence King and Lived at the Union League,” New York Daily Tribune, Oct. 31, 1893, 4. On Parsons, see Memories of Samuel Parsons and Charles A. Birnbaum and Lisa E. Crowder, eds., Pioneers of American Landscape Design (Washington, DC: National Park Service, 1993), 93-96.

  4 “His Mind Unbalanced,” 7.

  5 Ibid.; “Registers of Admission, Bloomingdale Asylum, NYH: 1891-1924,” vol. 1, “1891-1896,” 51, transcription courtesy of James L. Gehrlich, Head of Archives, Medical Center Archives, New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. See also “C. W. Gould Is Dead in California Home,” New York Times, Mar. 20, 1931, 25. Gould was a founder of Gould and Wilkie, the New York law firm that would later handle King’s estate.

  6 James L. Gehrlich, e-mail communication with author, June 22, 2006.

  7 “Is Clarence King Insane? ” New York Sun, Nov. 3, 1893, 1.

  8 “His Mind Unbalanced,” 7; La Farge to HA, 7 Nov. [1893], Hay Collection, Brown, cited in Wilkins, King, 388.

  9 Emmons, “Clarence King—Geologist,” in Hague, Memoirs, 293.