Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord

Posted on November 8, 2025 by admin

Concord naturally follows Lexington. That’s just the way it is. I made the short hop between Lexington and Concord on the morning of October 23, ahead of the day’s ultimate destination in Rhode Island. The first thing I needed to know was the status of the men’s room at the Concord Visitor Center, there on Main Street. I’m glad to report I didn’t run into any “closed for the season” nonsense.

I can also report that the South Burying Place is half a block away, an irregular slice of land wedged between Main, a side street, and some basic apartments.

Notably similar in style to Lexington, and why would they be any different?

One detail on the latter stone caught my attention. It took me a few minutes to work it out.

Deacon Joseph Dakin happened to depart this life on March 13, 1744/3. Ahead of the British switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, there were competing ideas of when New Year’s Day should be: January 1 or March 25. Most of the rest of Europe had gone to January by the 1740s, but England clung to its traditional date. He died March 13, 1743 by the the traditional reckoning; March 13, 1744 if January 1 is the first day of the year. Besides switching to Gregorian, the ’52 change fixed January 1 as New Year’s Day in the English-speaking world.

That’s the kind of detail that can make my day. A lagniappe of the visit. South Burying Place itself was a lagniappe to my travels that day. The cemetery I had in mind to see was Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a short drive from Concord’s main retail street. Not to be confused with the one of the same name in New York state, though I have to say that one looks like it would be worth a visit.

Sleepy Hollow in Massachusetts is in a wooded hollow.

A wooded hollow. That’s a good place for a cemetery. Better yet, Sleepy Hollow is a cemetery of some age, by North American standards. Even better yet, autumn colors.

When I got there, I found I wasn’t alone among the living. A rare thing at a cemetery. A trickle of people came and went to pay their respects to a clutch of famed authors who are buried at Sleepy Hollow. They’re up on Authors Ridge. The cemetery thoughtfully built a small parking lot at the base of the ridge, to facilitate that trickle of literary pilgrims.

A path from the lot leads upward. At the crest of the ridge, the authors are found with other family members. In alphabetical order:

Louisa May Alcott.

Here visitors don’t leave stones or small coins, but pencils, pens and paper. She wasn’t the only one to attract writing instruments.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Where’s Waldo? Right there. Interesting that his memory attracted pine cones.

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Henry David Thoreau.

When I parked at the small lot, I noticed a group of four girls, college students would be my guess, heading up the path to Authors Ridge. I waited a few minutes in my car, since I didn’t want to interrupt their pilgrimage. Also, I wanted the ridge to myself, if possible. I guessed they wouldn’t be long, and soon they came down the path, got in their car and left.

About an hour later, when I had finished my own cemetery stroll, I was checking my maps in the car, when a middle-woman pulled up, parked, and headed up Authors Ridge, walking her small dog. The trickle was continuing.

I preferred a more leisurely inspection of the authors’ stones, and the rest of the cemetery, for that matter. Such excellent contour.

There’s also a large selection of stones for non-famous residents of this part of the world.

Besides, the authors aren’t the only notable burials. Here’s Daniel Chester French, sculptor of renown.

If the seated Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial was the only thing he ever did, he’d still be remembered. But of course he did a lot more. The smaller version of “The Republic,” bright gold in color and standing even now in Chicago, is one that comes to mind. So do the allegories at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House at the southern tip of Manhattan. And Gen. Oglethorpe in Savannah.

But you don’t have to go so far to find one of French’s works. Elsewhere in Sleepy Hollow is the Melvin Memorial, honoring three Concord brothers named Melvin (Asa, John and Samuel), who each gave their last full measure of devotion for the Union in ways that represent the spectrum of soldier death in that war: died in combat, of disease, and in a prison camp.

The figure is known as Mourning Victory, a version of which is held by the Met.

Another famed work of French’s is in Concord: namely, “The Minute Man” at Minute Man National Historical Park.

I didn’t bother with that historical park this time, since I knew it would be closed. But I did see it 30 years ago, and it’s stuck with me. Just example of French’s work standing the test — and literally standing the test — of time.

More Lexington

Posted on November 7, 2025 by admin

Cute, Lexington. Cute.

I didn’t visit Massachusetts last month to do sightseeing, but rather to see old friends – Rich, Lisa and Steve. They are the latest in my visits to old friends in ’25, which took me to Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and New York before I arrived in Massachusetts, where I stayed with Rich and Lisa, whose home is in Lexington.

Being a mid-week visit, my Massachusetts friends had work to do during much of the day on October 22, which is how I ended up at Battle Green that morning. I wasn’t about to sit around at Rich and Lisa’s when I could go see nearby places. Even places I’d been before, such as Battle Green. But it had been about 30 years, so (as usual) it was like I’d never been there before.

Near Battle Green is Buckman Tavern.

I didn’t remember visiting before. It’s a small museum these days, dedicated to the part it played in the Battle of Lexington – militiamen gathered there ahead of the battle, not knowing what to expect – but also its existence as a tavern in colonial and early Republic days.

Wandering through, I couldn’t help being impressed by how much effort running a tavern must have involved in those days, which not only included work in the building itself, but also running a nearby farm, since 18th-century tavern keepers weren’t going to get their food and drink from wholesalers, shipped in by truck.

Of course, just staying alive in the 18th century, or really most anytime before the 20th century, seems like it would have been a lot of grinding effort for most people a lot of the time. But they had their recreation, too (and of course drinking).

Not far from Battle Green, on the fittingly named Hancock Street, is Hancock-Clarke Parsonage, another Lexington museum these days, and one I didn’t recall visiting before. It was close enough to the green to walk there. I took the noon tour.

I’m glad William Dawes gets this due on the sign. As my one-armed 8th grade history teacher told us, Listen my children and you shall hear/ of the midnight ride of William Dawes just doesn’t work. (He wasn’t the first to notice.) I see that he has a memorial at King’s Chapel Burial Ground in downtown Boston. If I ever make it back there, to visit Hopestill Barns, and I should, I’ll look for Dawes.

Also mentioned at Hancock-Clarke: the slaves that worked at the house during the pre-Revolutionary period, Jack and Dinah. Their names appear on small plaques near the museum entrance.

As the longstanding residence of Lexington’s minister, Hancock-Clarke has a rather different feeling than the tavern down the road. That is, austere yet well-furnished due to the wealth of the Hancock family. John Hancock’s grandfather, Rev. John Hancock (d. 1752), lived there, and afterwards Rev. Jonas Clarke (d. 1805) and his passel of children lived there during the Revolution. So it was entirely reasonable that John Hancock and Sam Adams were staying there on the night of April 18, 1775. As a visitor in modern times, you can see the very place where those two sat and drank (tea, the docent claimed) in front of one of the house’s large windows.

That evening, I had dinner with Rich and Lisa and Steve at Field & Vine in Somerville, which made for that most excellent combination: a good meal and convivial conversation. In 30 years since I spent any time in Somerville, the town has apparently become a foodie destination. Who knew?

On the morning of 23rd, I left Massachusetts to begin my drive home. True to character, not a direct drive. But I didn’t want to leave Lexington without a visit to the Old Burial Ground, which I hadn’t had time for the day before. “Ye” Old Burial Ground, as the town puts it. At least there isn’t an “e” tacked onto “Old,” but I doubt that whoever did the sign was thinking, let’s use a thorn.

That aside, it’s a fine old cemetery.

The building in the background, incidentally, is the Church of St. Brigid. One wonders how most of the permanent residents of the Old Burial Ground would react to a Catholic church in the vicinity. Not too well, I suspect.

Memorials from a time before the Victorians came along and ennobled them a bit.

Or we moderns came along with our “celebration of life” euphemisms. It’s right there on the stone: As time doth fly, our death draws nigh.

Not many tombs like this. Locke might have been the only one, come to think of it.

Something of a surprise.

Maybe not. However they felt about Regulars, the townspeople surely must have felt that a dead one deserved a Christian burial, and it wasn’t like they could ship him back home. The stone clearly came later, long after the passions of the war had cooled.

Indeed: Joseph Fiske, Lexington’s town doctor, recorded a bill for seven wounded soldiers he treated at Buckman Tavern the day after the battle [did he get paid?]. This soldier was likely one of them, but succumbed to his wounds in the following days. The simple granite slab was erected by the Lexington Historical Society in 1905.

The wonder is that anyone knew where the Regular was buried at all. Unless they were guessing in 1905. After all, militia commander John Parker – who died of TB only months after the Battle of Lexington – is known to be in the Old Burial Ground, but his exact location is unknown.

Battle Green, Lexington

Posted on November 6, 2025 by admin

Too bad about iconic. If there ever were a time to use iconic to describe sometime distinctive and revered, John Parker in bronze would be it.

Icons are no accidents. The pose captures the Battle of Lexington as we, Americans, want to remember it: the resoluteness of an ordinary man in the face of the enemy. What the militiamen experienced that morning is partly enshrouded in mystery like a battlefield of the time might be with gun smoke. No one knows who fired the first shot, for instance, but that doesn’t keep the Shot Heard Around the World from having its own name during later generations — a remarkable thing for a simple firearm discharge to have.

Lore has encrusted the story. Even so, the Patriot soldiers in the Revolution, collectively, can’t be said to have lacked resoluteness over the long years of conflict.

The Parker bronze stands on the edge of Battle Green in Lexington, Massachusetts, and across the street from Buckman Tavern, where the militiamen of the town waited the night before the battle. Among their number on April 19, 1775, was a young man named Jonathan Harrington, a fifer in the militia. About 75 years later, he’s thought to have posed for a photograph, now on display at Buckman Tavern.

Said to be the last survivor of the battle, and the only one to be photographed. The American Battlefield Trust cites a Harrington family history: He said he was aroused early that morning by a cry from his mother, who said: ‘Jonathan, get up, the regulars are coming, and something must be done.’ Jonathan was a fifer. He arose, went to the place where the patriots were gathering, and was with the company on the approach of the British.

It had rained during the early hours of October 22, 2025 in Lexington, but by late morning the sun was out and only a scattering of puddles remained. Battle Green stretched out behind the bronze John Parker. For a time, I was the only person on the green, though a steady stream of car traffic was the be seen on the roads edging the grounds.

John Parker, originally “Minuteman Statue” by the prolific sculptor and public monument specialist Henry Hudson Kitson, is a latecomer to the green, erected in 1900.

The Battle Green flagpole is newest of all, erected only in 1962. Even so, the pole is on the National Register of Historic Places, and an act of Congress specifies that a flag will always be flown there.

Well within living memory of the battle itself (1799), the town – fully aware of its role as spark of the Revolution – erected a memorial, and relocated the bones of the militiamen killed in the battle to a spot in front of it.

Though not formally part of the green, First Parish Unitarian-Universalist is distinctly part of the place, and looks about as New England as a church can.

It might as well be part of the green, considering the history of the congregation. The present church is a 19th-century structure near the site of Lexington’s only church in 1775, which was a hotbed of Revolutionary sentiment at the time.

Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven

Posted on November 5, 2025 by admin

By the afternoon of October 21, New York City was in my rearview mirror, but I wasn’t that far away: New Haven, Connecticut. I wanted to made a short stop at Yale University. During the tedious minutes spent looking for a legal parking place close enough to campus to make that doable, I doubted the wisdom of my idea, but eventually I found a spot. Also, I was ready: I had a roll of quarters for parking meters. Most of them can be paid by app or some such these days, but they also take quarters (most of them), and I’m a traditionalist when in comes to parking meters.

Yale is sprawling, leafy and picturesque in a collegiate sort of way. Digression: The centennial of Fred Waring’s recording of “Collegiate” passed earlier this year, and no one mentioned it. That’s almost as important a musical anniversary as that of “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”

Good to see a prominent memorial to the Yale men who didn’t return from the Great War. RIP, gentlemen.

Adjacent to the Yale campus is the Grove Street Cemetery, sporting a fine Egyptian Revival entrance. Not something you see often.

That’s what Vanderbilt needed, a cemetery across the street. All we ever had across the street was the fast food that’s now found on campuses: Krystal, Bojangles, Popeyes, Pizza Hut (Inn?), Wendy’s, etc.

Grove Street owes its founding to pestilence. “After severe yellow fever epidemics in 1794 and 1795, the [New Haven] Green was simply too crowded to continue as the city’s chief burial ground,” the cemetery’s web site says. “In 1796 a group of New Haven citizens led by U.S. Senator James Hillhouse planned a new cemetery on a location at the edge of town. Their efforts were officially recognized in October 1797 when the State of Connecticut incorporated the cemetery as the New Burying Ground in New Haven.”

Since then, the population of the cemetery has grown, with stones of various shapes recalling the dead, and trees to provide them shade.

In October, the trees also provide color.

I didn’t go looking for anyone in particular, though there are a lot of notables here. Such as Eli Whitney, inventor; Noah Webster, lexicographer; Josiah Willard Gibbs Jr., scientist; Lyman Beecher, abolitionist and prohibitionist; and O.C. Marsh, paleontologist, among many others.

A scattering of stones mark veterans.

Including one with a GAR star that’s obviously a replacement for something older.

Being so close to Yale, a fair number of academics rest at Grove Street.

Including this fellow. It’s a little hard to see, but his memorial is inscribed in Latin.

Kingman Brewster was president of Yale from 1963 to 1977, at a time of considerable hubbub on campus, and changes in university policy. Such as going coed in 1969, relatively late for an Ivy League school. No doubt cemeteries are well populated these days by Yale alumni angered by that decision.

A surprise find: a memorial to captives from La Amistad who died in New Haven, waiting for the adjudication of their case. Waiting for their freedom, that is.

Elsewhere in the cemetery reposes Roger Sherman Baldwin, who argued the case for the Amistad captives, and Professor Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr., who deciphered their language (Mende).

Remarkably, the names of the captives aren’t forgotten. RIP, Fa, Tua, Weluwa, Kapeli, Yammoni and Kaba.

Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn

Posted on November 2, 2025 by admin

On the morning of October 19, Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn was still pretty green.

Of course, the 30-acre park was named for the talented Revolutionary War general, not for the hues of its 50-plus species of trees, very many of which seemed to be ginkgoes. Whatever the coloration, the park proved to be a nice place for a stroll that day, offering a more manageable size than either Central Park the day before, or Prospect Park would later that day (as great as those two are).

My idea for attending Open House New York was Manhattan on Saturday, Brooklyn on Sunday, planning that took us – by this time, just the two of us – to Atlantic Terminal by way of the LIRR on Sunday morning. From there, Fort Greene Park is a short walk, though once you get there, it’s something of a hustle to climb the park’s central hill. A fort had been on the site, active during the Revolution and again for the War of 1812, for a reason.

As a park, Fort Greene came of age at roughly the same time as the idea of municipal parks themselves, that is during the mid-19th century, with some agitation on the part of Walt Whitman – editor of the Brooklyn Eagle in the late 1840s – helping facilitate its creation.

In 1857, Whitman wrote about the place, known at the time as Washington Park: This beautiful ground is now covered with rich verdure, and is one of the pleasantest resorts anywhere around. On its lofty tops you feel the breeze, and from them behold one of the finest views in the world. Most of the trees are yet too young to cast much shade, but they are growing finely.

We recollect there was a very obstinate and indignant opposition to the securing of these noble grounds, some twelve years since, when the project was mooted before the Common Council and the public. It was argued that Brooklyn was not rich enough to stand the expense of purchase; and that it would be better to let the “old fort” be dug away, and blocked up with buildings.

Fortunately these counsels did not prevail. A more far-sighted policy… carried the day.

Is there any one left of those who so furiously opposed Washington Park, who is not now glad that his opposition did not succeed?

I’m also glad there’s a park, though leaving the ruins of the fort might have been an interesting approach to creating one. As Whitman would surely have appreciated, 21st-century Brooklynites were out in numbers (but not crowds) to enjoy the park on a warmish fall day, walking their dogs and turning their kids loose to play. A scattering of other people had come for Open House.

The green space and trees were only the first layer. Come 1867, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux applied their considerable talents into making Fort Greene into their vision of an urban park, a small-scale version of Central Park or Prospect Park. That’s reason enough to visit.

One of their additions: grand outdoor stairs.

It wasn’t until 1908 that those stairs led to the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, memorializing the more than 11,500 POWs who died in wretched conditions aboard British prison ships during the Revolution.

The column isn’t usually open, but Fort Greene Park was an Open House site, so we were able to go inside after waiting in line a short time. I was expecting stairs inside. But there was just a rusty iron ladder, which the park ranger who led us into the column called “scary.” I agree.

There had been a spiral staircase in the memorial’s early days, but it is long gone. I wasn’t in a stair-climbing mood at that moment anyway, so for me it was just as well. If the city ever comes up with the scratch, there might be stairs again, the ranger said.

She also told us about the formation of the park, the long delay in setting up the memorial, and the tomb on the grounds that holds bones of some of the prisoners. The tomb isn’t open to the public.

A newer memorial, plaque-on-rock style and in place almost 50 years now, was dedicated by a young King Juan Carlos in memory of the Spaniards who fought for American independence.

French assistance to the nascent United States was mentioned prominently in school but not, that I remember, Spanish efforts, which were nothing to sneeze at. Maybe by 1898, Spaniards who gave the matter any thought considered the U.S. a pack of ingrates, but such is geopolitics. By 1976 and later, it was high time to acknowledge the likes of Bernardo de Gálvez and his men, and I was glad to find out that Pensacola still celebrates Gálvez Day (May 8).

A Few Manhattan Churches

Posted on October 31, 2025 by admin

After the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen we headed for Park Ave., location of a famed Byzantine revival Episcopal church. Before we got there, we noticed a much smaller church, not actually part of the Open House New York event, at 5 E 48th Street.

Church of Sweden in New York

We’d come to the Svenska kyrkan i New York, where services are still held in Swedish. Not only was the church open, there was a cafe on its first floor. The sanctuary is on the second floor. Elegant little place, suitable for the small congregation that Swedish services might attract.

Under the Historik section of the church’s web site, you’ll find this helpful information: När svenskarna började flytta till USA och hur Svenska kyrkan på olika sätt velat vara närvarande i New York. A fuller history in English is on the Wiki page.

St. Bartholomew’s Church

St. Bartholomew’s Church, an Episcopal congregation on Park Ave., was participating in the Open House. That meant it was sure to be not only open, but lighted. The first time I went there, many years ago, I compared it to a cavern. Later I visited when more lights were on. Twenty years ago I wrote: “This time, it was better lighted, the better to show off the church’s superb Byzantine-style mosaics.”

During my 2025 visit, now joined by my nephew Robert, we were able not just to gaze at the lit sacred space, but we had the benefit of a knowledgeable docent, a woman of a certain vintage with a hobbled gait and a raspy voice. She knew the history of the congregation, and its slice of Manhattan. She had the artistic detail down cold. She knew her ecclesiastical styles. From the depth of detail about the many artists who worked on the church, it sounded like she knew some of the artists personally, though that couldn’t be literally true for most of them, since the church was built more than 100 years ago, with certain later design additions.

At the direction of the docent, Geof unveiled the altar for a moment.

It might have been interesting to know Hildreth Meière. Hers was an astounding career: “Working with leading architects of her day, Meière designed approximately 100 commissions, both secular and liturgical,” the International Hildreth Meière Association says. “Her best-known commissions include Radio City Music Hall, One Wall Street, St. Bartholomew’s Church, Temple Emanu-El, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. She also decorated the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., and the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis.”

The mosaics didn’t photograph well – that is, I’m too lazy to carry around a better camera – but good images are at the association web site.

Emerging from St. Bart, we agreed that heading back to the cafe at the Swedish church would be a good idea. It was.

Sated with Swedish-style open-faced sandwiches, our walk soon continued, up Fifth Ave. to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which was its usual crowded splendor. I think I spotted some new, or newish murals, just inside the nave. A wedding was in progress. One must come after another every Saturday not in Lent, with ropes closing off a large part of the nave, making for extra crowding in the side aisles.

We didn’t stay. Not far away was a church far less crowded but with its own splendor.

St. Thomas Church

Namely, St. Thomas Church, another major Manhattan Episcopalian congregation. Inside, lights were low. The reredos stood out in the dark, a glowing presence above the altar populated by more than 60 stone carved figures, I’ve read. A Christian crowd: saints, prophets and reformers in an ivory colored stone from Wisconsin. I’d have needed a telephoto lens to have any hope of identifying any of them, but that didn’t make them any less striking.

Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson designed the church, completing it in 1914. They were another of those prolific architects now out of living memory who seemed to design a long list of churches in a short time. The duo did St. Barts, too, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, just to name a few famed sacred spaces of near-palatial character.

Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church

Just steps away from St. Thomas, as real estate press releases like to say about two close buildings, is Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. It was our last Open House church for that day.

With its auditorium style and balconies, it reminded me of the Moody Church in Chicago, though Fifth Avenue Pres is much older: 150 years this year, as it happens.

A hallway and some rooms extend beyond the front of the nave, including a columbarium.

Waiting for occupants. All it will take is time.

No Kings, Many Watches

Posted on October 30, 2025 by admin

We arrived in Manhattan by the Long Island Rail Road late morning on Saturday, October 18. We walked the short distance from Penn Station to Times Square, where a crowd was in motion.

We hadn’t come to New York for No Kings, but Open House New York. Some days earlier, I’d read about the protest was scheduled for late morning on Saturday, October 18. Well now, that’s good timing.

About 100,000 came out in the city’s five marches, one for each borough, according to the NYPD, which is probably as good an estimate as any. Maybe 75,000 of those were in Manhattan?

A small number compared, say, with New Year’s Eve in Times Square – an event not to be found on any list of the things I dream of doing. They say that pulls in a million souls. Of course, it’s easier to draw a crowd for a drunken holiday revel than a sober civic rally. Also, that million people are far more regimented than any mere anti-administration march. Regimented by the police, that is. No Kings, though informal in most ways, was self-regimented. Seems that the NYPD made no arrests associated with the NYC marches.

March? More of a mass walk. Considering some of the egregious behavior being protested, the walking crowd was cheerful. Cheerfully angry, you might call it. As Spock might say in observing such peculiar human emotion, “fascinating.” Then again, it was a middle-class protest, largely attracting people (like me) who would have been nowhere near if they thought a riot was even a little likely.

Do these or any protests make any difference in short- or longer-term policy? Who knows. It is pretty to think so, but the notion wasn’t going to keep us at No Kings more than about a half hour, some of which was spent navigating upstream – which happened to be uptown – against the downstream human tide – who happened to be going downtown.

We numbered three by the time we got to Times Square. The train that Yuriko and I took from Syosset Station on Long Island went to Penn Station, and by the marvel that is texting, we were able to arrange a meeting there with Geof Huth, resident of Astoria these days, in the terminal’s new great hall.

I was astonished by the new hall, called the Moynihan Train Hall and completed only in 2021. Clearly I hadn’t kept up with major redevelopment projects in New York. SOM did the design, knocking it out of the park. I’d been fully prepared for the dowdy experience that Penn Station has been since the notorious destruction of the previous one in the 1960s.

Instead, we entered an open, elegant, fully modern space, crowned by the glass and steel of an expansive skylight and watched over by a four-faced clock on a pole. I was even more surprised when we headed outside and realized that the Moynihan Train Hall was created inside the city’s former main post office, the James A. Farley Building. The last time I thought about that massive, remarkable Beaux-Arts structure (McKim, Mead & White) was the last time I walked around this part of NYC, when it was still a post office.

The Farley exterior gleams the gleam of a newly restored facade, and happily kept the post office faux-motto: Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Good to see.

After leaving the No Kings crowd, we made our way to 20 West 44th Street, an 1899-vintage building and home of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York.

General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York

It was open for the Open House.

“The second-oldest library in the city includes a light-filled atrium that is used as a vibrant programming space by the General Society and other nonprofits,” notes the OHNY web site. “Overlooking the library on a striking wrought iron balcony is the John M. Mossman Lock Collection, which contains more than 370 locks, keys, and tools dating from 2000 BC to the early 20th century.”

Nothing like a handsome pre-war (Great War) building in which to spend some time. The enormous lock and key collection attests to the fundamental dishonesty of a fraction of mankind, and the ingenuity brought to the task of coping with that fact.

As for the General Society, it provides training and other assistance to skilled craftsmen, beginning in the late 18th century (at different locations) and down to the present. Its motto: By hammer and hand all arts do stand. That accounts for the hammer and hand emerging from the wall in its space.

As for the other nonprofits in the building, they include the Horological Society of New York, keeper of all things related to timekeeping since 1866.

It too was open, and we visited the impressive collection of watches and clocks and horological tools and books.

This is no fusty org relegated to the part-time care of antiquarians. HSNY has the organization heft (and scratch) to put on enormous annual galas, with the next one slated for the Plaza Hotel next year to celebrate its 160th anniversary. That will certainly be a picture to behold.

The Basilica of St. Fidelis, Cathedral of the Plains

Posted on October 12, 2025 by admin

Today I let Google finish “Cathedral of the…” and got the following responses, top to bottom (capitalization sic): Sea, deep, Holy Angels, holy angels photos, forsaken, immaculate conception, incarnation, Madeleine, deep ds3, pines.

Cathedral of the Sea is La catedral del mar, a “Spanish drama series” that I’d never heard of, though I have been to Santa Maria del Mar. The Cathedral of the Deep and of the Forsaken appear to be aspects of electronic games, and the others are churches in various places.

Not on the list is the Cathedral of the Plains. But it’s out there, in central Kansas.

That’s a nickname, since the church isn’t actually a cathedral, but the wording does appear on its point-of-interest spot on road maps – and naturally that got my attention. Formally, the church is the Basilica of St. Fidelis, said to be the largest church west of the Mississippi by seating capacity (1,100) upon completion in 1911 in Victoria, Kansas. Conveniently (for me), some decades later I-70 was built not far away.

John T. Comès (d. 1922), a Pittsburgh architect, designed the church for a congregation of Volga German immigrants. Who had come to greater Victoria starting in the 1870s. Why Victoria? Why not? No doubt they looking for flat farmland.

Comès, an incredibly prolific specialist in Catholic churches, did a fine job.

Nice.

The Volga Germans aren’t forgotten. No doubt their descendants are all around this part of Kansas. In 1976, the townspeople erected a memorial to their immigrant ancestors, across the street from St. Fidelis. A work by Pete Felton, a “Kansan limestone carver,” according to this posting, which also mentions limestone fenceposts as important in Kansas — something else to look into sometime.

After nearly 50 years, the statues are looking a little weatherworn, but they abide.

The woman and daughters caught the light at that time of day, the afternoon of September 23.

The man and sons did not. Would sunlight have made him less – Stalinesque?

Never mind. St. Fidelis Cemetery isn’t far to the north of the basilica, and I stopped by.

A good variety of memorials in a nice setting, even if the land lacks contour and there’s no flora beyond grass and cut flowers.

Then I started to notice iron crosses.

A lot of them. That called for further investigation, and it wasn’t long before I found out that Volga Germans were known for their wrought-iron crosses.

“German-Russian blacksmiths began making wrought-iron crosses in North Dakota as early as 1884,” says an article posted by North Dakota State University. “The hand-made crosses were most prevalent in central North Dakota from the late 1880s to about 1925, when marble and granite became more popular for grave marking. Most wrought-iron crosses appear in Catholic graveyards, although a few of these markers are also found in German-Russian Lutheran graveyards.”

The article talks of their crosses in North Dakota, but notes that they are also found in the “Northern Plains.” Such as Kansas, apparently.

The Kansas State Capitol

Posted on October 10, 2025 by admin

One fine day in the Kansas State Capitol last month, I turned a corner and found myself looking up at Old Testament John Brown. Larger than life, as he has loomed these 160+ years.

The mural, actually called “Tragic Prelude,” is more than 11 feet tall and 31 feet long, taking up an entire wall in the capitol. The lighting isn’t particularly good for taking images of the whole work – a ceiling light in particular washes out much of John Brown’s (let’s say) emphatic expression. Luckily, the image seems to be in the public domain.

A plaque under the mural says:

Sponsored by Kansas Press Association, aided by Kansas school children, these murals were painted in 1940-41 by John Steuart Curry, who was born near Dunavent, Kansas. In John Brown’s outstretched left hand is the word of God. In his right, a “Beecher’s Bible.” Beside him, facing each other, are contending Free Soil and Pro-Slavery forces.

The plaque does not say that the many members of Kansas legislature hated the painting at first, and refused to hang it in Curry’s lifetime (he died in 1946). Curry had had the temerity to depict Bleeding Kansas, by far the most interesting period in the history of the territory and state; the interesting times no one wants to live through. Maybe they thought it glorified John Brown — which it half way does, but with more than a tinge of madness in him as well. Bottom line, the work apparently didn’t sit well with those who might have wanted a Kansas of doughty farmers and hardy pioneers and fertile landscapes.

Eventually, to its credit, the legislature did have the work installed. Whatever you think of John Brown, it’s a striking piece. I’d seen depictions of it, but either never knew or had forgotten that it hangs in the Kansas State Capitol, which made coming across it all the more memorable.

I almost missed it, having dawdled in Salina and Abilene for most of that day (September 24), but I made it to Topeka and the capitol about 30 minutes before it closed.

Like any number of monumental edifices, this one took time: construction finished in 1903 after 37 years in the works, not counting renovations or the comparatively recent addition of the 4,420-pound, 22-foot tall bronze “Ad Astra” on top of the dome, which was in 2002. The figure is an acknowledgment of the Kaw Nation (Kansa), who lent their name to the state.

Architect E. Townsend Mix (d. 1890) designed the capitol, though he didn’t live to see its completion. Most of his work is in Milwaukee, where he lived the longest, including St. Paul’s Episcopal in that city.

A fine dome.

Well-appointed chambers.

The capitol interior is fairly art-intensive. Not all capitols are. For instance, there are limestone statues in large niches — native limestone, a sign says — of famed Kansans, by Peter “Fritts” Felten Jr. of Hays, Kansas. Such as one of the aviatrix from Atchison.

Amelia Earhart is immediately recognizable, which is no mean feat for someone who is (very likely) been dead for nearly 90 years.

This figure is also more-or-less recognizable – though a depiction of him that’s a little strange, looking for all the world like Mr. Clean. Only a little like that Ike fellow on an Eisenhower dollar.

The fellow below’s fame has, I’m afraid, shriveled up like a balloon that lost its helium: William Allen White (d. 1944) Probably not even known in Kansas any more, since he was a noted journalist, a profession whose posthumous fame tends to be brief. Editor, Pulitzer Prizewinner, his plaque says. A Progressive Through-and-Through, it does not say. That might not play in Kansas at the moment.

Not one, but two time capsules reside with the capitol walls. At least two that I saw.

This is a digression, but one thing still leads to another on line, and I came across a list published in 1991 by the International Time Capsule Society: “10 Most Wanted Time Capsules.” That is, a list of time capsules whose location had been lost and thus were (up till then) unrecoverable. The page notes that two have been found over the last 30+ years, but eight are still beyond the ken of man. Such as:

MIT Cyclotron Time Capsule.

In 1939 a group of MIT engineers placed a brass capsule beneath an 18-ton-magnet used in a brand new, state-of-the-art cyclotron. The capsule was to be opened in 50 years but was not. No one remembered the time capsule was there (the cyclotron had long since been deactivated). But when reminded of its existence, MIT was faced with another problem: how do you get a time capsule out from under a 36,000-pound lid?

Bicentennial Wagon Train Time Capsule.

This capsule was supposed to hold the signatures of 22 million Americans. But on July 4, 1976, when President Gerald Ford arrived for the sealing ceremony in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, someone stole the capsule from an unattended van in the bicentennial wagon train. The capsule’s maker, the Reynolds Company, had broken the mold. The thief’s identity and the whereabouts of the capsule are unsolved mysteries.

Further investigation reveals that the whereabouts of the papers that Americans signed in 1976 – a good many pounds of it – mysteriously disappeared, and that theft from a van was one idea, though organizational misdirection sounds more plausible to me. To the same warehouse as the Ark of the Covenant, in other words. Anyway, there’s a 12-episode streaming service comedy in that incident.

Back to capitols. It’s now easier to keep track of the ones I haven’t seen than otherwise.

Green for an interior visit, orange for exterior only, gold representing uncertainty, and white no visit.

The Wyoming State Capitol

Posted on October 9, 2025 by admin

No skeletons were to be found at the Wyoming State Capitol last month, but you can hardly expect too many bone collections on display at state houses. The state of Wyoming does, however, want to remind visitors that they are in Wyoming.

The work is called “Spirit of Wyoming,” and it stands on the capitol grounds, created by artist Edward J. Fraughton (d. 2024). The more I look at it, the more there is to think about. Which I suppose is at least one indication of a good work of art. So the Spirit of Wyoming involves the immediate risk of catastrophic injury by being thrown from a horse? Probably not what the legislature had in mind.

Rather, it might be the determination to hang on, no matter how much or madly the horse bucks. Especially in territorial and early statehood days, that sort of determination applied to a lot of Wyomingites, whether they were cowboys or not.

I had the opportunity to walk all the way around the capitol after arriving on the cloudy but warm afternoon of September 8.

Golf leaf on a copper dome. Gold probably because it’s gold, not because Wyoming has ever produced that much. As of 2025, the state isn’t even among the top 10 all-time U.S. state producers.

I think this was the front.

It faces a long avenue. It was a Monday. Cheyenne isn’t, just yet, cursed with heavy traffic.

Also, the Wyoming state seal was to be found on that side of the building, in the sidewalk. Like in Virginia, except that you can walk on that one, like the slain tyrant it depicts. No treading on Wyoming.

Adopted in 1893, not long after statehood, and revised in 1921, the seal lists four sources of wealth and livelihoods, unusually (I think) for a state seal. They go with the cowboy and miner figures: livestock, grain, mines and oil. In our time, farming and mineral extraction, at least in terms of employment, are declining industries in Wyoming. Maybe the seal will be revised someday to include data centers, as they sprout in the Equality State.

On the other hand, Wyoming is still a major energy producer among the several states, especially when it comes to coal: 41.1 percent of the total nationwide (EIA stats), though national coal output is a much smaller pie – a dirty pie, to be sure – than it used to be. Also worth mentioning: a quarter of net electricity generation in the state is by renewables, roughly the same percentage as nationally. There is no nuclear power generation in Wyoming. When those data centers eventually get small modular reactors, that would change.

Another distinction of the Wyoming capitol is that work started on it before statehood, with ground broken in 1886. David Gibbs – later mayor of Oklahoma City, of all things – and the prolific William DuBois (a Chicago trained architect) did the design, one of restrained elegance.

This is one of the four statues at the capitol known as the Four Sisters: Truth. The others are Justice, Courage and Hope.

Though they look vintage, their niches remained empty for 131 years “for reasons that remain unclear,” according to a sign in the capitol. In more recent times, the state tapped the mononymous sculptor Delissalde to fill the niches, and the works were unveiled only in 2019.

They’re way up there.

One more thing to note: a display in the capitol lauds the state – actually the territory – for its enfranchisement of women in 1869, the first place anywhere to do so. Why Wyoming? You could chalk it up to the toughness of frontier women, but certainly women in all the other 19th-century territories were plenty tough. The broader movement to expand the franchise was already underway, though early in the game – and from the sound of things in this article at least, the territory’s move was something of a retroactively happy result “for a large, strange mix of reasons.”

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US History