Category Archives: History

Quantill’s Graves

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Odd discovery for the day: the remains of William Quantrill seem to be buried in two different places. I was looking at the Wiki page devoted to the notorious raider and noticed, without apparent explanation, pictures of two gravestones for the man, one in Ohio, another in Missouri.

I looked into the subject a little further and this article has some explanation of it. Through a series of convoluted acts of skullduggery on the part of his mother and others, parts of Quantrill ended up in two different places, one close to where he grew up, the other close to where he made his name.

Reminds me of the two gravesites for Daniel Boone, but in that case there’s a dispute about where all of his mortal remain are – Kentucky or Missouri. In Quantrill’s case, the two states seem to have divvied up the distinction of having his final resting place.

Calendar Oddities

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Snow today, beginning in the morning, finally enough to obscure the grass. At about noon, Lilly asked her device – which has a male-voice version of Siri – Is it going to snow a lot today? Male-Siri said, “It appears to be snowing.” Guess it knows how to look out the window.

On Saturday a cheap 2014 calendar arrived from a company we do scant business with. I like it for its completely eccentric choice of special dates.

It’s got some presidential birthdays, of course. In order: McKinley, FDR, Lincoln, Washington, Jackson, Madison, Jefferson, Grant, Kennedy, J.Q. Adams, Hoover, Benjamin Harrison, Eisenhower, TR, and Wilson. Not a bad selection, but Benjamin Harrison? Well, he did ink the bills for six new states. And… even I have to look up the details of his administration. Maybe the calendar maker is a fan of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.

Other calendar oddities include mentioning the first national election (Jan. 7, 1789), Alexander Hamilton’s birthday (Jan. 11, 1757), “Edison’s Incandescent Lamp Patent” (Jan. 27, 1880), Henry Longfellow’s birthday (Feb. 27, 1807), “Peary Discovered the North Pole” (April 6, 1909), “Dewey’s Victory at Manila Bay” (May 1, 1898), Col. Lindbergh’s NY to Paris Flight” (May 21, 1927), “Hawaii Annexed” (July 7, 1898), “Panama Canal Opened” (Aug. 15, 1914), “Monroe Doctrine Announced” (Dec. 2, 1823), “South Pole Discovered” (Dec. 14, 1911), and “Wilbur Wright’s 1st Aeroplane Flight (Dec. 17, 1903).” That’s right, aeroplane. It’s good to be up on to-day’s latest technical marvels.

Standard federal holidays, as well as an assortment of popular days (Ground Hog Day, Valentine’s Day, etc.) and Jewish holidays are noted. V-J Day is noted on Sept. 2, but V-E Day isn’t mentioned. (I learned elsewhere that “Victory Day” on Sept. 2 is actually a state holiday in Rhode Island; see “A Few Interesting Facts…” ) The Wright Bros. (one, anyway) and Lindbergh made the cut, but no space flight of any kind did, manned or unmanned, Soviet or American. You’d think they’d be space for the first Moon landing at least. Hawaii annexed but why not the purchase of Alaska? Longfellow but not, say, Walt Whitman?

Ah, well. We each live according to an eccentric calendar.

The Memory Be Not Quite So Green

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Turning cold. It’ll be colder, they say, over the weekend, like full-blown winter without snow cover.

Why am I hearing so much about Kennedy? Lilly asked the other day. She’d heard something on TV, or something at school, or somewhere. I told her it was the 50th anniversary of his death on Friday. After that, you won’t hear so much, unless you take a special interest.

Will there be much interest in 2063? I doubt it, but I’ll also never know. President Kennedy won’t be completely forgotten, of course, even as his life and unfortunate death slip from living memory (I’m on the leading edge of people who don’t remember him – the majority of the world now).

I suspect his memory will shrink, just as it has, say, for President McKinley. Who has his place in the collective memory, and a physical memorial, too. Just not a very well known one. One of these days, I need to take a look at it, but I seldom make it over to Ohio.

Between Hitchen and Hittite Law

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A major re-arrangement of books and other items continues on the lower level of our house. Today I moved my copy of the 14th Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. Why do I have a copy of such a weighty set of volumes – and I mean that literally, since I had to move them all – in this age of vast libraries accessible via broadband? Sentiment. Inertia. My fixed notion that I’ll never get rid of a book unless it’s completely fallen apart.

That isn’t quite true. I’ve donated books. But only ones I have no interest in, and I’ve never had many books like that.

Besides, I acquired the 14th Edition nearly two decades ago, before the rise of easy Internet information, misinformation, and pseudoinformation. I chanced across a church rummage sale one day in 1995. The entire set was being offered there for exactly $2. So at 24 volumes, that was 8.3 cents a volume. Not the famed 11th Edition, but at that price worth the investment.

I can’t say I’ve spent a lot of time with Britannica over the years, but I’ve dipped into the well now and then. One day I spotted the entry for Hitler, Adolph. The entry isn’t as prominent as you’d think, because the 14th Edition was published in late 1929, which turned out to be awful timing for selling expensive books. Hitler merits only 16 lines on Volume 11, page 598, there between entries for Hitchen, a town in Hertfordshire, England, and Hittite Law: see Babylonian Law. Would that he had stayed there in his obscure corner of an old reference work.

He’s called a “Bavarian politician.” It’s clear from the text that his main claim to fame at that moment, at least in the English-speaking world, was his part in the Beer Hall Putsch. (Ninety years ago this month, which I’d forgotten; but the Chicago Tribune, of all things, recently reminded me of the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht this month. The paper was able to find a few survivors and interview them.) The text also points out that, whatever his status in the NSDAP, Hitler didn’t even have a seat in the Reichstag representing the party – Dr. Frick and Ludendorff did.

Ludendorff, whose entry in the encyclopedia is a lot longer than Hitler’s, later broke with the Nazis and had the good fortune to die of natural causes in the mid-30s. By contrast, Wilhelm Frick, not one of the better-known Nazis any more, was shown the business end of a rope in Nuremberg in 1946.

Lights No, Flags Yes

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While driving along this evening I saw two houses with Christmas lights. Christmas lights all aglow here in mid-November. No, no, no. I can understand putting up the lights during the relatively warm days of November – even though it’s been cold lately – but lighting them? Let November be November, not some run-up to December.

Another thing I saw in the neighborhood: a flagpole flying the Hawaiian state flag, right under the U.S. flag. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Hawaiian flag around here before. It’s one of the cooler state flags, with its Union Jack canton and red, white and blue stripes supposedly symbolizing the major islands. I wonder what the occasion is; maybe the homeowners were there recently, and brought it back as a souvenir.

I also wonder whether they’ll fly the flag on Hawaiian holidays. According to the always interesting Flags of the World web site, whose Hawaii page includes such details as an 1896 variation on the flag, state occasions on which to fly the flag include Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day and King Kamehameha I Day, March 26 and June 11, respectively. Also, the third Friday in August is Statehood Day.

And, of course, not everyone is happy about the Hawaiian flag, even though it was used by the independent kingdom in the 19th century.

Armistice Day Snow

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I’m the only one that’s going to call yesterday’s snow the Armistice Day Snow of 2013, but I’m peculiar that way. The name echoes the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940, but of course yesterday’s event wasn’t nearly as severe, or unexpected. The Minnesota Historical Society remembers 1940. So does Ludington, Mich.

Or call it the Veterans Day Snow of 2013. It was strange to watch snowflakes blow by and the ground whiten up this early.

The view from the back door.

The dog didn’t mind the snow.

Thought so. She’s an Illinois hound, after all, and her coat has been noticeably thickening in recent weeks.

Armistice Day 2013

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“The Armistice” by Eugene Savage, on display at the Elks National Veterans Memorial, Chicago.

Posted nearby is the following:

The principal figure near the center is the Madonna, the Mother of Christ, the Prince of Peace. She portrays the bereaved mother with raised hands in a gesture of stopping contending forces from opposite sides. She looks down sorrowfully upon the figure of Hope, now chained to a gun carriage, symbolizing ruthless force. Those who have come to grief and defeat in the trenches are crawling out. An old clock, stopped at the Hour of Eleven, indicates the significant hour of the signing of the Armistice – the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of November, 1918. The idols and gold cloth flung about represent the ruthless destruction of churches and things made by Man. The hands pointing accusing fingers and the expression of horror on the faces of the soldiers on the top right effectively recall the unspeakable Horror of War. Balancing this are the American Soldiers, on the left, with Smiles of Joy, who are beginning the Celebration of the End of the War. They have just heard the news of the Armistice, and are ringing a bell salvaged from the ruins, upon which they carry a French peasant girl. The Dove, Olive Branch and Rainbow fill out the scene, indicating Promise of a New Peace.

Old Tractors & Old Abe

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At the College of the Ozarks is the Ralph Foster Museum, and at the Ralph Foster Museum is a modified 1921 Oldsmobile Model 46 Roadster, the truck used in the Beverly Hillbillies. I didn’t get to see that because the museum was closed the day I visited in early November last year.

Instead we went to the Gaetz Tractor Museum. On display are such marvels of the machine age as the two-cylinder, three-ton Advance Rumely, introduced in 1924.

There’s also a Rumely 6A, vintage 1930, as well as four-cylinder, three-ton Case model K, ca. 1927.

Made by the J.I. Case Threshing Machine Co., which was eventually M&A’d out of existence as a separate entity. Now that’s a corporate name. Beats much of what we have now, such as the Three Initial Corp. or the Random-Syllable Co.

Note the eagle. That was J.I. Case’s corporate symbol, but it isn’t just any eagle. It’s Old Abe.

Old Abe – a living eagle – was the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment from 1861 to ’64. Quite a story. Bonanzaville, an open-air museum in West Fargo, ND, that we visited in ’06, has a striking Case Eagle on display.

The Auditorium Theatre

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How many inglenooks are there in public buildings in greater Chicago? A fireplace recess, that is. I wouldn’t know, but it couldn’t be too many.

The Auditorium Theatre on Congress Ave. downtown has two large ones, echoing the enormous size of the theater itself, in the dress circle lobby. In 1889, when the theater was spanking new, the inglenooks featured gas fireplaces with cast-iron “logs” and long benches warmed by radiators underneath the cushions, and walls adorned by foliate mosaic friezes. Socializing went on, but so did warming. The Earth was colder then, and indoor heating was much more primitive.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t notice the inglenooks when I attended a show at the Auditorium Theatre in 1989. Or was it 1988? I went to see a radio broadcast of Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know? Or was it Lily Tomlin’s one-woman show? It’s a jumble. In any case, I remember the Auditorium Theatre being opulent in the late 1980s, but since then Roosevelt University, which owns the building, completed a restoration in 2001 to make it look more like it did when the structure was spanking new. So when I saw the theater on Saturday, I saw something new – which looked old.

On December 19, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison and Vice President Levi P. Morton  – just about everyone’s favorite obscure high office holders of the Gilded Age, I figure – came for the dedication of the Auditorium Theatre. Interestingly enough, they’d been nominated for these offices in the summer of ’88 at the theater, even though it wasn’t finished yet. That’s where the Republican Party held its convention that year.

President Harrison said a few words at the dedication, which are on a plaque hanging on the wall at the south inglenook: “I wish that this great building may continue to be to all your population that which it should be: opening its doors from night to night, calling your people away from cares of business to those enjoyments and entertainments which develop the souls of men and inspire those whose lives are heavy with daily toil and in this magnificent and enchanted presence, lift them for a time out of dull things into those higher things where men should live.”

He and his vice president would have seen an interior very much like I saw this weekend, a tour de force design by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, with its 3,500 clear-glass electric light bulbs luminously arrayed on the ceiling arches, the balcony and the gallery fronts, the 20 x 24-foot murals depicting winter and spring, and the 4,200 seats, including some way, way up in the third balcony. These days, I understand, there are 3,877 seats; people have grown fatter in the last 130 years.

The theater has plenty of other distinctions, which are best explored at its web site. Like many other grand buildings, it was nearly destroyed. Supposedly in the early ’30s, when it seemingly had outlived its economic usefulness, bids were taken for demolition. But the theater and its surrounding building (more about which later) were so solidly built that no one wanted to pay to have it razed.

Another story I enjoyed about the theater is its World War II use. The USO had the stage and some of the front-row seats removed to install a bowling alley. It looked like this.

For Chicago developer Ferdinand Peck, the theater was only one component of the property, and so it remains today. The Auditorium Theatre is part of the Auditorium Building, which originally included office space and a hotel, and now has office space and classrooms. Since 1946, Roosevelt University has owned the building as well as the theater, which have separate entrances. The Auditorium Building also could be explored as a part of Openhousechicago, so I took a look.

The building has a fine lobby, and a grand staircase with nice stained glass, and a good view of Grant Park and Lake Michigan from its library on the 12th floor. It also pays homage to a president and first lady.

This mosaic is on the landing between the first and second floors. Also in the lobby are busts of Franklin and Eleanor, in case you’re inclined to think the school was named after the other famed Roosevelt.

Pullman Ruins

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What creates a ruin? The elements over time, neglect, war, accidents, extreme weather, assorted acts of God. In the case of the industrial structures at Pullman State Historic District, arson. After the structure was severely damaged in 1998, the Chicago Tribune reported that “the police determined the fire to be arson and arrested a 45-year-old man on Wednesday,” the article noted. “Sgt. Maurice Sullivan, a detective with the police bomb and arson unit, said that the man confessed to setting the blaze at the direction of voices he heard in his head.”

Much reconstruction of the Administration Building and Central Clock Tower has been done since then.

Inside, though, it’s still mostly raw space. These things take time.

The nearby industrial buildings aren’t in such good shape, inside or out, though they’ve probably been stabilized.

Even though I believe the buildings ought to be restored, there’s still something satisfying about wandering around ruins. Especially when large pieces of iron equipment are nearby.

What is it? What was it used for? Someone could probably tell me. Why did it end up in exactly that place and position? Who were the workmen who moved it to where it is, and did they intend to abandon it, or just put it somewhere temporarily – but never got back to it? Maybe no one knows these things any more. Or maybe I’m misinterpreting the object. Could be it was removed from the wrecked building after the fire, and will return after its restoration.

Someday, parts of the Pullman district, including the industrial sites, might be part of a National Historical Park, along the lines of the one in Lowell, Mass. The National Park Service recently reported that it thought Pullman had the right stuff to be such a park, and Congress and other interested parties have to figure out how to pay for it. Considering Congress’ recently difficulties with even basic governance, it might be a while before that happens.

Sounds like a good idea to me. A petition to grant park status to Pullman was at the Visitors Center when we picked up our House Tour tickets, and I signed it.