CHAPTER 2: THE GIRLS FROM AUBURN
And she never cooked a meal in her life: Recollections of Mildred Woodruff, wife of Dorothy’s brother Douglas. Undated.
The Beardsley family and its connections: “They Prospered with the Abundance,” account by the Auburn Fortnightly Club, seventy-fifth year, 1957, 24.
The many uses for cornstarch: Ayers, 139; Oswego Daily Times, September 29, 1876; Monroe, 183–85.
At family gatherings, he produced jingles and poems he had written: “A Reminiscence of My Father, George Underwood,” by Rosamond U. Carpenter, in Ruth Brown’s “The Abundant Life,” 11.
Dorothy’s great-uncle Nelson Beardsley later became a partner of Seward’s: “Major Beardsley,” Auburn Weekly Bulletin, January 26, 1900; Obituary: Nelson Beardsley, Oswego Daily Palladium, January 15, 1894.
One of her aunts, Mary Woodruff, was a good friend of Seward’s daughter Fanny: Jennifer Haines, e-mail, January 18, 2011.
stunned by the crime: Goodwin discusses the trial and its effect on Seward’s national political reputation, 85–87.
Seward was out of town, and Frances wrote to him with the news: Letter from Frances to William Seward, August 21, 1847, William Henry Seward Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester.
but when Seward returned from Washington, his once disapproving neighbors referred to him: “They Prospered with the Abundance,” 10.
One of Ros’s nieces: Sheila Tucker, e-mail, April 21, 2010.
Presidents Johnson and Grant and General Custer: Peter Wisbey, e-mail, September 7, 2010.
One summer, Dorothy’s extended family rented Willow Point: Amy Dunning Underwood (1883–1960), who was married to Rosamond’s brother George Jr., wrote: “The Hermon Woodruffs and Will Beardsley had it one summer. . . . Every Sunday morning we would meet and have an informal prayer meeting, as I remember, Mr. Woodruff usually conducted.” From an undated account, “Lake Life Flourished,” courtesy Leland Coalson.
whom an Auburn neighbor referred to as “a very dangerous woman”: Penney and Livingston, 110.
Eliza was a tall, regal woman whose glorious black eyes: Stanton, Eighty Years and More, 435.
For two decades Eliza was the president: David W. Connelly, “WEIU Helped Women Cope in Harsh World,” Auburn Citizen, March 2, 2009.
In 1911, when FDR was a twenty-nine-year-old state senator: David W. Connelly, e-mail, October 18, 2010.
Auburn’s rapid growth from a quiet village: Auburn and Its Prison: Both Sides of the Wall, booklet for exhibition at the Cayuga Museum of History and Art, Summer 2003.
Anyone who broke the rule of silence was flogged with the “cat”: Storke, 155.
In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont visited the prison on behalf of the French government and reported: “. . . when the day is finished, and the prisoners have returned to their cells, the silence within these vast walls, which contain so many prisoners, is that of death” (Tocqueville and Beaumont, 32). Elam Lynds, who helped devise the system and carried a bullwhip, told them, “A prison director, especially if he’s an innovator, needs to be given absolute and assured authority. . . . I consider punishment by the whip as the most effective and also the most humane. . . .” (Damrosch, 57).
When he got out, he and a former prisoner: Frederik R-L Osborne, Introduction, Within Prison Walls, 2; Chamberlain, 261; Rose Field, “The Personality and the Work of Thomas Mott Osborne,” review of There Is No Truce in the New York Times, March 31, 1935.
Today, the Osborne Association runs treatment, educational, and vocational services in New York prisons; they also help ex-offenders find jobs and adjust to life after their release. Frederik Osborne, Thomas Mott Osborne’s grandson, is its president.
Her earliest memory, she told her grandchildren: “Assassin Czolgosz Is Executed at Auburn,” New York Times, October 29, 1901. According to the Times, Czolgosz was buried in the prison cemetery, but a groundskeeper at Fort Hill Cemetery swore to Sheila Tucker, the Cayuga County historian, that he knew the gravesite.
reflecting the romantic Victorian view, called Logan “the best specimen”: Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, Volume 1, Cincinnati: Published by the State of Ohio, 960.
“that masterpiece of oratory which ranks along with the memorable speech of President Lincoln at Gettysburg”: Monroe, 9.
CHAPTER 3: “A FUNNY, SCRAGGLY PLACE”
“one of that peculiar and persevering class” . . . The News declared: Rocky Mountain News, December 30, 1874, and June 15, 1875.
A thin, obsessive scholar: Foster, 246–52.
“very desirable that its resources be made known”: Hayden to Columus Delano, Washington, D.C., January 27, 1873, L.S., Hayden Survey, R.G. 57, National Archives. Quoted in Goetzmann, 516.
He gave lectures in Washington and New York: “Western Scenery: Interesting Facts Concerning Our National Parks,” New York Times, April 16, 1874.
William Blackmore, a British investor in American ventures: Foster, 229.
The most serious trouble between the settlers and the Utes: For a lucid account of the influence of the Hayden Atlas, Milk Creek, the mining camps, and the White River Agency, see Sprague, Colorado, 78–100.
“ ‘The gun no good’ ”: Lou Smart’s letter, a vivid first-person description of her family’s dealings with the Utes, was written from Hot Sulphur Springs on November 2, 1879, and published in History of Hayden & West Routt County, 2–7.
“My idea is that, unless removed”: Young, 34.
A log school and a store were built on the homestead of Sam and Mary Reid: Leslie, Anthracite, Barbee, and Tosh, 34; Leslie, Images of America: Hayden, 9–23.
A man named Ezekiel Shelton: Robert S. Temple, in History of Hayden & West Routt County, 282.
CHAPTER 4: “REFINED, INTELLIGENT GENTLEWOMEN”
Seventy-five of Dorothy and Ros’s classmates: Annual Report of the President for 1905/1906, Smith College Archives.
One graduate wrote: Elizabeth Spader Clark, Class Book, Smith College, Nineteen Hundred and Nine, 169.
Addams had longed to go to Smith: Knight, 20–21.
“influence in reforming the evils of society”: “Last Will and Testament of Miss Sophia Smith, Late of Hatfield, Mass.” Smith College Archives.
President L. Clark Seelye wrote: “Smith College,” Official Circular, No. 3, 1877, Smith College Archives.
“refined, intelligent gentlewomen”: from “In Memory of Rosamond Underwood Carpenter.”
However, since most of them had “neither the call nor the competence”: William Allen Neilson, 7.
After a week at Wood’s Hole in the summer of 1902: Jane Kelly, “1880 Class Letters,” Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
Smith’s entrance examinations, which included: “Specifications of the Requirements for Admission,” Catalogue of Smith College, Forty-Third Year, 1916–1917. Smith College Archives.
Delta Sigma, which was, one of its founding members emphasized: “Early Days of Delta Sigma Invitation House,” Esther M. Wyman, Class of 1911, January 1958, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
Students were allowed to invite gentlemen: Nanci Young, college archivist of Smith College Archives, e-mail, December 14, 2009.
“It was a fine opportunity . . . [Y]ou will not become the useless members”: Springfield Republican, June 14, 1909.
At the chapel exercises, President Seeyle spoke of the first Smith class: Springfield Republican, June 15, 1909.
CHAPTER 5: UNFENCED
When he arrived at Princeton and read the “Freshman Bible”: Carpenter, Confessions, 33.
Farrington sounded like the name of an English resort town: Ibid., 1.
In November 1904 he gave a speech in New York: Startt, 46; Bragdon, 337–38.
He officially introduced it to the Board of Trustees: Bragdon, “The Quad Fight Plan,” 312–36.
The prospect of not getting into a club: Confessions, 38.
Wil
son told Ferry, “Some of the wealthy New York and Pennsylvania people”: Ibid., 40.
“To the country at large, his dispute with the Princeton clubs was analogous”: Bragdon, 330.
telling his acolyte: “At those great state institutions”: letter from Carpenter to Bragdon, November 30, 1967. After Bragdon’s book was published, Carpenter sent him detailed responses to chapters as he read them. These letters are part of the Woodrow Wilson Collection, 1837–1986, Box 62, Folder 17, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library; Princeton University.
“When you go out into the world and have to make your own living”: E. S. W. Kerr interview with Ferry Carpenter, June 6, 1967, Woodrow Wilson Collection, Princeton University.
Aristocracy, he informed a despondent Ferry Carpenter: Confessions, 41.
Wilson had gotten to know Frederick Jackson Turner: Bragdon, 194, 233, 236; E. David Cronon, “Woodrow Wilson, Frederick Jackson Turner, and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 71, no. 4 (Summer 1988), 296–300.
“They wore big black hats”: Confessions, 4–15.
During a raid on Paint Creek: The journalist was Hatton W. Sumners. “Charles Goodnight visits John B. Dawson on Dawson’s Ranch,” 1911, in Wilson, 28–29.
As one of Dawson’s granddaughters described it: Wilson, 122.
The alfalfa was so high . . . “cure anything from gripes”: Farrington Carpenter, oral history, OH 42, Colorado Historical Society.
In the Princeton library: Confessions, 20.
As Carpenter recalled, Dawson “could read but he couldn’t write”: OH 42.
Carpenter said he felt as if he had stumbled on a gold mine: Confessions, 45–46.
Carpenter asked his father for a loan: Ibid., 50.
The last thing Ferry wanted to do: OH 51, Denver Public Library.
which he proposed to do: Confessions, 45.
He described the improvements he had made upon his first claim: Department of the Interior, United States Land Office, Farrington R. Carpenter applications for homesteads, August 10, 1907, and August 14, 1914. Homestead Certificate, Department of the Interior, United States Land Office, Glenwood Springs, CO, March 20, 1920.
It was as thrilling to him as the American Revolution: Confessions, 45, 46.
CHAPTER 6: THE GRAND TOUR
Their parents held afternoon card parties: “They Prospered with the Abundance,” 1957.
Seward, though, was a loyal patron of Delmonico’s: Thomas, 93, 191.
The incomprehensible instructions: Ranhofer, 1007.
Miss Elkins was reported to be in Vichy: “Miss Elkins Not in Paris,” New York Times, August 28, 1910; “Miss Elkins Bride of W. F. R. Hitt,” New York Times, October 28, 1913.
they went to see Isadora Duncan . . . baby was born: Kurth, 248–69.
The main house was a palatial, half-timbered Queen Anne: Gayraud, 48.
an amateur botanist: Cunisset-Carnot, 304.
One room, “The Lounge of the Queen Regent”: La Vanguardia, May 14, 1910.
He was a member of the Barcelona stock exchange: “W. W. Stuart Dies in Spain,” New York Times, April 1, 1914.
Often he entertained his guests: La Vanguardia, April 23, 1911, and January 24, 1905.
CHAPTER 7: FERRY’S SCHEME
In 1912, when Ferry Carpenter set up: Confessions, 57.
The bell was rung: Leslie, Images of America: Hayden, 25.
Galloway said, “I see you’re going to”: Confessions, 58.
He didn’t have many clients: Ibid., 65.
The cattle business also took years: According to Ferry’s son Ed Carpenter, Ferry and Jack ended the first year with a loss of $477.88. Ferry’s father continued to subsidize them until 1914, when they had 225 head and made a profit of $2,150. America’s First Grazier, 47.
“We ran him home,” Ferry told an appreciative group: Speech at Colorado State University, accepting the Stockman of the Year Award, February 1967; Tread of Pioneers Museum.
one evening in Cambridge, Turner rebuked his daughter: Letter from Farrington R. Carpenter to Henry Bragdon, December 11, 1967, Woodrow Wilson Collection, Princeton University.
Carpenter assured Bragdon that by then Wilson no longer shared Turner’s view of women. Carey Thomas, the second president of Bryn Mawr College and a well-known suffragist, had hired Wilson to teach history there in 1884. Carpenter wrote that Thomas had “knocked out of [Wilson’s] head his theretofore belief that all women’s minds were incapable of matching men’s intellectual structures.” But Bragdon says that at the time, Wilson believed that women lost their femininity when they chose to work with men. Wilson wrote to a friend at Bryn Mawr, “I find that teaching women relaxes my mental muscle.”
As Ferry put it, “The Sheep. Always we live in fear & hatred of them”: Letter to Frederick Jackson Turner, October 6, 1922. TU Box 31A (20), Frederick Jackson Turner Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, CA.
In October 1913, writing from Oak Point: October 13, 1913, TU Box 20A (3), Ibid.
A district attorney in Steamboat Springs instructed Ferry to take on the jurors one by one, as you would if you were shooting ducks. The DA said that he’d know when they were convinced: “When a man gets interested in something he is listening to, his neck begins to stretch as you grip his attention. When his Adam’s apple comes out so far that it finally chins itself on his collar, you know you have him.” Women—not yet allowed to be jurors in Colorado—would be more difficult. “They are always so conscious of how their back hair may be looking that they never allow their necks to stretch and therefore can’t be totally swayed by oratory.” Confessions, 71–72.
“Well, guess I’d better roll in—I think of you all every now & again”: Letter to Turner, October 13, 1913, Frederick Jackson Turner Papers, Huntington Library.
“We did not want strays”: Beverly Smith, “America’s Most Unusual Storyteller,” Saturday Evening Post, April 12, 1952.
Twenty-five people attended, the paper reported: “Elkhead District Formed,” Routt County Republican, April 21, 1911.
education officials handed out postcards: Zimmerman, 81, citing Country School Legacy: Humanities on the Frontier (Silt, CO): Country School Legacy, 1981, 46.
Fulton had grown up: Rebecca Fulton Wattles, in History of Hayden & West Routt County, 186.
he said during a talk in Denver about his early experiences: “The Adventures of a Tenderfoot,” January 9, 1964, Denver Public Library.
Early on the morning after the teachers arrived: Confessions, 81–84.
As his son Ed recalled: America’s First Grazier, 54–55.
Jack White was married in 1915, and I suspect that he played an unacknowledged role in Carpenter’s scheme. A few years earlier, either during a trip home or at a dance in Steamboat Springs (accounts vary), Jack had met a fearless society girl from Evanston—Ann Ehrat. The daughter of a wealthy importer, she had left for Colorado in 1908 and homesteaded on Cow Creek, south of Steamboat Springs, with her brother, William. Jack’s success at wooing Ann could well have spurred Ferry’s notion to recruit more women like her to Elkhead.
CHAPTER 8: DEPARTURE
Postcard of South Street: The gates in the left foreground are the entrance to the former Beardsley Roselawn estate.
Dorothy introduced the speaker, Mrs. Theodore M. Pomeroy: “For Which Mrs. Pomeroy Was Prepared Because She Was ‘Born a Suffragist,’ ” Auburn Citizen, June 8, 1914.
She was not surprised to hear Ros say: Grace Kennard Underwood, explanation of how Rosamond and Dorothy came to be hired at Elkhead School, and their early weeks, undated and unfinished.
Stewart wrote about a camping trip in December: Elinore Pruitt Stewart, 198.
“We all got so much out of so little”: Ibid., 211.
The domestic-science movement was led: Shapiro, 3–10.
War with Mexico appeared imminent: Cooper, 319–21.
He had ju
st made second lieutenant: “Kennard Underwood a Second Lieutenant,” Auburn Advertiser-Journal, June 10, 1916.
CHAPTER 9: HELL HILL
“seems to be something of a joke”: There were actually several passenger trains each day by 1916, weather permitting.
As an early historian of Colorado wrote: Stone, 50.
This caused Thomas Durant, the vice president of Union Pacific, to gleefully announce: Boner, 10.
Moffat was described by a friend as: Stone, 51.
He promised it would reduce the travel time: “New Line West of Denver: David H. Moffat Completes Its Financing Arrangements,” New York Times, June 22, 1902.
The Moffat Road is still the highest standard-gauge railroad ever built in North America: The section on the building of the Moffat Road is reconstructed from accounts in Bollinger, Boner, and Black, and from information provided by Dave Naples.
The railroad’s chief locating engineer: Bollinger, 33–42.
“The battle of Gettysburg was a Quaker meeting”: Boner, 81.
Argo wrote in his diary one June day: Bollinger, 38.
Remarkably, no passenger was ever killed: Interview with Dave Naples, June 30, 2010.
There was at least one birth: Ibid.
“They brought some Chinese in to shovel the snow”: Tom Ross, “Railroad Came to Steamboat 100 Years Ago,” Steamboat Pilot, January 16, 2008.
He established a dummy power company: Bollinger, 35–39, 42.
Although Harriman was no longer alive: Boner, 164–65.
Susan B. Anthony went twice to push the cause there: Stephen J. Leonard, “Bristling for Their Rights: Colorado’s Women and the Mandate of 1893,” in Grinstead and Fogelberg, 225–33.
“[W]hile I have not taken to myself a husband”: Smith College, Class of 1897 Reunion Book, Smith College Archives.
As another traveler remembered: “My 1926 Trip to Corona,” by William O. Gibson, in Griswold, 149.
described this CREST OF THE MAIN RANGE: Griswold, 31.
advertised by the Moffat Road in a famous poster as the “Top O’ the World”: Bollinger, back jacket.
John Adair had arrived in Hayden on horseback: Janet Adair Ozbun, in History of Hayden & West Routt County, 126.
Nothing Daunted Page 26