THURSDAY'S TREASURES - Horst Family Bible, 1892

Stored in one of my mother's many closets in an upstairs bedroom is this family treasure - The Holy Bible given by Charles Frederick Horst (1856-1912) and his wife Odalie Felice Fortier (1857-1920) to their children on Christmas Day, December 25, 1892. The Bible will have been in the family for 120 years this coming Christmas!

Charles and Odalie Horst are my great-great-grandparents. Charles was the oldest son of Martin Horst (1830-1878) and Apollonia Weinschenk (1829-1908), both immigrants from Germany. The two had married in Mobile, Alabama, and raised their large family. Odalie was the daughter of Jacques Omer Fortier (1813-1867) and Augustine Melanie Laperle Degruy (1822-1872) of New Orleans. Charles and Odalie were married January 10, 1879 at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Mobile.

The two soon started their own family - Charles Frederick, born November 15, 1880, and Edward Martin, born May 5, 1882. It was not long after the birth of their second son that the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, due to Charles' health problems (lung problems, according to family stories).  Charles' father Martin and his family had settled in Cincinnati soon after arriving in America in 1846. Martin's older sister Anna Elizabeth (1827-1877) had remained in Cincinnati after marrying John Ginter (1818-1906), and had raised their five children here. So when Charles, Odalie and their two small sons arrived they moved into the Ginter's home at "30 Rittenhouse".
Charles worked in his previous field in a bar as a bartender. Odalie had two more children here - my great-grandmother Pearl Alphonsine, on November 19, 1884, and Omer Leo, born May 5, 1887. It was while living in Ohio that Charles and Odalie purchased this Holy Bible as a Christmas gift for their children. This Bible, well over a thousand pages, was published in Newport, Kentucky. Newport is on the border of Kentucky and Ohio, at the confluence of the Ohio and Licking Rivers, directly across from Cincinnati. It is now considered part of the Greater Cincinnati Metropolitan area. It was soon after 1892 that the Horst family relocated to Birmingham, Alabama where their descendants now reside. [Charles and Odalie had their fifth child, Odalie Felice on January 20, 1896 in Birmingham.]

The book measures 9.25" x 11.5". It is leather bound with exquisite detail embossed on the cover. The binding is very worn and has deteriorated over time. The back cover is the same as the front but is not as worn. There are no family births or deaths listed, as was common to do in those times. Since it was a gift to the children it's possible that another Horst Family Bible existed (or exists) where these important dates were listed.

The pages themselves are in great condition for the most part; the edges have become well worn and some are more frayed than others. But the book is full of beautiful engraved prints throughout, and in what is labeled "Gallery of Scripture Illustrations". Here are a few examples.

            The Stations of the Cross are printed in color.

There are also several beautifully detailed prayers printed in color, using gold and red.

While looking through the book for pictures I came across a few personal items. Pressed in the pages I found a carnation on one page and what looks like an old corsage on another. The second item didn't have any discernible flowers but did have several stems and leaves wrapped together at the base with wire.

There was also an insert of a photographic print of Bishop Toolen of Mobile, with a handwritten note and his signature: "In remembrance of my twentieth anniversary. T. J. Toolen, Bishop of Mobile." Bishop Thomas Joseph Toolen (1886-1976) was Bishop of Mobile from 1927-1969.

On one of the last blank pages of the Bible was drawings, or scribbles, done by a young child with a pencil. It could have been Charles and Odalie's grandchildren or great-grandchildren scribbling in it dozens of years later. But I like to think that maybe their own children, born in the 19th century, did the same thing that my kids, and me and my siblings did, when we were little and trying to act big and opened that big book, sat down with a pencil and made their own little make on family history.

WONDERFUL WEDNESDAY'S PHOTOS - The 1848 Cincinnati Riverfront Panorama (restored)

The Original Display of the 1848 Cincinnati Panorama
Cincinnati Public Library

 [from "1848 Daguerreotypes Bring Middle America's Past to Life"; Julie Rehmeyer; Wired magazine; August 2010]

"In 1848, Charles Fontayne and William Porter produced one of the most famous photographs in the history of the medium — a panorama spanning some 2 miles of Cincinnati waterfront. They did it with eight 6.5- by 8.5-inch daguerreotype plates, a then-new technology that in skilled hands displays mind-blowing resolution.

Detail of Restored Panorama

Fontayne and Porter were definitely skilled, but no one knew just how amazing their images were until three years ago, when conservators at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, began restoration work on the deteriorating plates. Magnifying glasses didn’t exhaust their detail; neither did an ultrasharp macro lens. Finally, the conservators deployed a stereo microscope. What they saw astonished them: The details — down to window curtains and wheel spokes — remained crisp even at 30X magnification. The panorama could be blown up to 170 by 20 feet without losing clarity; a digicam would have to record 140,000 megapixels per shot to match that. Under the microscope, the plates revealed a vanished world, the earliest known record of an urbanizing America.

Detail of Restored Panorama

But the conservators also found trouble. At that magnification, dust motes smaller than red blood cells became image-obscuring blobs. Corrosion from a few molecules of water obscured a face peeking out a window. Even polishing marks from the original preparation of the plates became a mass of dark streaks.

Trying to restore the plates themselves might have damaged the images, and the conservators didn’t want to risk ruining the finest American daguerreotypes in existence. So they put them in a case filled with inert argon gas to arrest the deterioration and went digital, turning to computer vision specialists at the University of Rochester. To them, the images were just noisy data, which they knew how to scrub.

Now Fontayne and Porter’s daguerreotypes are stabilized and its details restored — 21st-century technology rescued an image from the 19th.

As a historical record, the Fontayne-Porter daguerreotype is unparalleled. It contains the first photographic images of steamboats, a railroad station, and one of the country’s earliest astronomical observatories. It may also be one of the earliest pictures to show free blacks, who were building a community in Cincinnati, just across the line from Kentucky slave country. A ditch running from the corner of a building down to the river — eroded by effluent from an outhouse — presages the cholera epidemic that hit the city the following year.

Even artifacts of daguerreotype preparation yielded new knowledge. The silver surface of an unexposed daguerreotype is tricky to polish to a mirror finish — even the finest cloths or brushes leave tracks that are clearly visible at high magnification. But the art historians didn’t want those marks removed; they wanted to be able to enhance them. It turns out that the streaks act as signatures. Each daguerreotypist had a distinct method of polishing — sweeping tiny suspended brushes across the plate or hand-polishing (as Fontayne and Porter did) with carefully chosen cloths. The resulting patterns vary, but in a small region they all look like very fine, roughly parallel dark lines. So Messing, Ardis, Tang, and their collaborators designed an algorithm to detect these unique patterns and bleach out the rest of the image.

After all the restoration, historians now know the exact hour and minute when the image was captured. Back in 1947, steamboat enthusiast Frederick Way and Cincinnati Public Library director Carl Vitz undertook an extensive historical investigation of the daguerreotype, using steamboat records to identify the only date on which all of those vessels were in Cincinnati: September 24, 1848. And by analyzing the angles of shadows, they figured the shots must have been taken just before 2 pm. A clock tower showed the time, but however much the researchers strained to read the 1-millimeter-diameter clock face with a magnifying glass, they couldn’t make it out.

After the images emerged from Eastman House’s microscope scanner, the team cheered when they saw the clock tower: It read 1:55."

Detail of Restored Panorama

Check This Out!

The Cincinnati Public Library has a website dedicated to viewing this amazing restoration - http://1848.cincinnatilibrary.org.

You are able to see each of the eight restored plates online, then zoom into the image to see first hand its clarity and its details. It will ASTOUND YOU! Many of the buildings and areas are also described for their historical significance.

And to think it is very possible, even probable that my Horst ancestors - Johann Eckhard Horst (1802-1852), my 4th great-grandfather, and Martin Horst (1830-1878), my 3rd great-grandfather - were living in the city on the day that this photograph was taken. What an opportunity to see exactly what the city looked like over 160 years ago!?!

HOMETOWN TUESDAY -- Cincinnati, Ohio, Part I

On August 7, 1846, my great-great-great-grandfather Martin Horst arrived in New York City, along with his father Johann Eckhard Horst (1802-1852), step-mother Elisa Geiss (1817-1852), older sister Anna Elizabeth (1827-1877), younger brother Carl (1835-1900) and two half-sisters, Wilhelmena "Mina" (1843-1885) and Maria (1845-UNK). Martin was just 16 years old. He and his family had arrived on the ship Gladiator, landing in New York Harbor as thousands had before them and hundreds of thousands would after - as immigrants hoping to start a new life in America. In fact during the 1840's more than 1.7 million immigrants arrived in the United States, almost three times as many as had come the decade before. Martin and his family had left their home in the village of Omer-Ohmen, in the Grand-Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, at the time a member of the German Confederation.

The Horsts stayed briefly on the east coast. On September 28, 1847, Martin became a naturalized citizen at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Maryland. At some point soon after this the family travelled to Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, where they would settle down.

from the Cincinnati Panorama of 1848
Fontayne and Porter Daguerreotype
(more about this photograph in panorama tomorrow - don't miss it!)

The History of Cincinnati, Ohio
[The following information is taken from OhioHistoryCenter.org, an online encyclopedia of Ohio and its history.] 

"In 1788, Israel Ludlow, Matthias Denman, and Robert Patterson purchased eight hundred acres from John Cleves Symmes along the Ohio River at the Licking River's mouth. Symmes had purchased two million acres of land from the Confederation Congress in 1787, hoping to become rich by selling land to others. Denman provided the necessary cash; Patterson found settlers; and Ludlow surveyed the land to make sales and also establish a town. They named the town Losantiville, a convoluted contraction of the idea that this was a "city across from the mouth of the Licking River." 

Law and order remained absent from Cincinnati during its early years. The settlers (around 700 total by 1790) organized a court and hired a sheriff, but the soldiers at nearby Fort Washington routinely had to establish martial law in the community. This became especially common as tensions increased with local Native Americans, especially the Shawnee Indians. Contributing to the lawlessness, many residents grew corn, which they distilled into alcohol and sold to the soldiers. Despite the lack of order and the various safety concerns, hundreds of settlers continued to flock to the town. They believed that they could make their fortunes providing the soldiers and people traveling down the Ohio River with supplies.  In 1803, the city had roughly one thousand civilian residents. It continued to grow, reaching nearly ten thousand people by 1820. Cincinnati had emerged as a major city, primarily due to its strategic location on the Ohio River. 

"Pork Packing in Cincinnati"
from 1873 Vienna Expo

 During the nineteenth century, Cincinnati continued to grow. The Ohio River provided Cincinnati residents with numerous business opportunities. Hotels, restaurants, and taverns quickly opened to meet the needs of settlers traveling westward on the Ohio River. Steamboats were manufactured and repaired in the city. Farmers brought their crops to the city to send down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, one of Ohio's major markets.  

The Miami and Erie Canal made the trip from western Ohio to Cincinnati much easier and less expensive for local farmers. In the early 1800s, Cincinnati developed into an important meatpacking center. Farmers brought their livestock to the city, where it was slaughtered, processed, and sold to western settlers or shipped to various markets. Beginning in the 1830s, ethnic Germans began to settle in Cincinnati. During this time period, Cincinnati was becoming the pork-processing center of the United States. Because of Cincinnati's association with meatpacking, the city became known as the "Porkopolis" of the United States.

Some residents opposed the activities of others in the city and actively campaigned to reform the community. The temperance movement targeted the Germans and the Irish, who were alleged to be well-known for their heavy drinking. Ohio abolitionists utilized Cincinnati to campaign against slavery. Located directly across the Ohio River from Kentucky, a slaveholding state, Cincinnati abolitionists published newspapers and anti-slavery tracts, hoping to convince their slaveholding neighbors to free their slaves. Participants in the Underground Railroad also smuggled runaway slaves across the Ohio River to potential freedom in the North.  

Not all white Ohioans supported the abolitionists. Many of these people feared that, if slavery ended, they would face competition from the freed African Americans. Race riots sometimes occurred, especially if whites feared that African Americans were gaining too much power or were infringing upon white opportunities. In 1829, one such riot occurred in Cincinnati, because Irish immigrants disliked competition from the African-American community.  

During the Civil War, most residents supported the United States, but a sizable number of people went south to fight for the Confederacy. Cincinnati served as a major recruiting and organization center for the United States military during this time. The city's businesses thrived, as they provided supplies to the soldiers and housing for both the soldiers and their families. Various charity organizations also were present in the city to help soldiers and their families."

Germans in "Zinzinnati"



1855 Cincinnati Riots
Published in Illustrated London News 1855

"Beginning in the 1830s, large numbers of Germans began to settle in Cincinnati. Many Germans lived in the area of Cincinnati known as Over-the-Rhine

Because of violent episodes like the one that occurred in Cincinnati in 1855, German immigrants tended to establish their own communities. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many native-born Americans feared outsiders. Some of these people objected to the immigrants' religious and cultural beliefs, while others believed that the foreigners would corrupt the morals of United States citizens.  

These people also contended that the quality of life within the United States would decline, as there were not enough jobs to employ the millions of people migrating to America. Many native-born Americans hoped either to limit immigration or to force foreigners to convert to American customs and beliefs. It would take several generations before the immigrants became truly accepted by the vast majority of white Ohioans." (from OhioHistoryCentral.org)

"German immigrants were responsible for developing industries that are considered "native" to Cincinnati, such as meat packing, the machine industry and building trades.

Albert Stein, a German engineer, planned Zinzinnati's water works in 1817. Frederick Rammelsberg of Hanover introduced machine production of furniture. The brewing industry in Zinzinnati, and across the United States, was a creation of German-American businessmen. The famous Christian Moerlein Brewery was started here in 1853.

Local banking grew out of the thriftiness of the German population. Germans established mutual savings societies and credit unions, and loaned money at interest at their weekly meetings. These meetings were frequently held in a tavern over a glass of beer, and with a staff that consisted of a part-time secretary. 

Baking is yet another industry that Germans established in Zinzinnati. There were also many small baking establishments operated by German-Americans in various Zinzinnati neighborhoods. In fact, there were so many German bakers that they even formed their own singing society - the Baeckergesangverein." (German-American Heritage Teaching Guide, Dr. Don Heinrich Tolzmann, University of Cincinnati)

Over-the-Rhine Neighborhood



Miami & Erie Canal
[taken before 1920 when it was used to build city subway, later paved over]

"The completion of the Miami & Erie Canal in 1828 became the catalyst for making Cincinnati the central trading hub west of the Appalachian Mountains. The canal linked the Great Lakes with the Ohio River, and all the Ohio farmland in between. The Over-the-Rhine neighborhood was full of saloons, beer gardens, restaurants, and theatres that catered to tastes ranging from legitimate theatre to burlesque. OTR was also a power center where corrupt Republican Party head "Boss" Cox ran the city through deals and schemes hatched at beer halls like Wielert's, still standing on Vine St..

1841 Lithograph of Cincinnati
Miami and Erie Canal in foreground

The canal that helped grow the city also gave Over-the-Rhine its name. Immigrants from Germanic countries began arriving in Cincinnati in increasingly large numbers starting in the1830s. In German, the district was called "über'm Rhein." Although Germans were among the city’s first settlers, they constituted a small percentage of the population until the city’s rapid growth in the mid-1800s. When the Germans began arriving in Cincinnati in larger numbers, starting in the 1830's, the area north of the Miami & Erie Canal was mostly gardens and farmland. The Germans transformed it into a bustling neighborhood. It developed such a high concentration of German-Americans that traveling over the bridges spanning the canal became known as "going over the Rhine," a tongue-in-cheek reference to Germany's Rhine River. At its peak of population, Over-the-Rhine was home to more than 45,000 people, roughly 75% of which were first or second-generation German-Americans." (from otrfoundation.org)

Six million dollars was spent in the 1920's to use the bed of the canal to build a downtown subway in Cincinnati. The surface was later paved over to form Central Parkway as funds ran out before the Cincinnati Subway was completed.

NOTE:  Over-the-Rhine was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 with 943 contributing buildings. It contains the largest collection of Italianate architecture in the United States and is an example of a 19th-century intact urban neighborhood. Its architectural significance has been compared to the French Quarter in New Orleans, the historic districts of Savannah, GA, Charleston, SC and Greenwich Village, NY.

[Next Week in "Hometown Tuesday" - The Horsts in "Cincinnati"]

SATURDAY'S STRUCTURE - Packet Ship Gladiator (1846)

In recognition of the new year that has just begun, it's a good time to write about a very important structure - the ship Gladiator. This is the ship that my 4th great-grandfather Ekhard Horst and his son, my 3rd great-grandfather Martin Horst and several members of their family travelled on in 1846 when they left their home in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, leaving their extended family, their friends and all they knew to start over in a new country they had never laid eyes on before. We've heard it all in school, how the new immigrants arrived on ships into New York Harbor, passed through Ellis Island before they were allowed to enter the country. But this story is not that simple, not that easy.

First, it's important to know that Ellis Island didn't open it's doors until January 1, 1892 (120 years ago today). The federal government had just taken over control of immigration in 1890. Before then it was the role of officials from the city where the port was located to process new arrivals. Before Ellis Island, Castle Garden  Emigrant Landing Depot functioned as the New York state immigration processing center, between 1855 and 1890. But the Horst family arrived in 1846, years before such official processing took place.

A Packet Ship Off Liverpool

Second, we probably think we can imagine what it was like to be a passenger on a ship to America - mostly from movies like Titanic, with its Irish passengers in 3rd Class who slept in little rooms with bunk beds and ate meals in little crowded common areas. But Titanic was a steamship, making its first run in 1912. Steamships did not become the main mode of transportation for most ocean travel until after the Civil War. There were a few steamships carrying passengers in the 1850's but most new arrivals came to America on packet ships. The Gladiator was one of these ships. Packet ships were so called because they originally carried mail and cargo; later, transporting people across the ocean became a new way to make money for the ships' owners.

Horst Family Sets Sail for America

John Ekhard Horst (1802-1852), my 4th great-grandfather, his second wife Eliza Geiss (1817-1852) and their children arrived in America in New York City harbor on August 7, 1846. Ekhard's first wife and my 4th great-grandmother, Elizabeth Martin (UNK-before 1842) had died in Germany, leaving four young children. Ekhard married Eliza around 1842 and they had two daughters. The children travelling with them were, from his first marriage, Elizabeth, age 19; Martin (my 3rd-great-grandfather), 16; Carl, 12; and their two young children Mina (Wilhelmina), 3, and Maria, their baby. Conrad, age 14 at the time, remained temporarily in Germany. Ekhard, as he was listed on the manifest, gave his occupation as “farmer”.

Passenger List from Gladiator, August 1846
[l to r: Name; Age; Sex; Occupation; Nationality (German, Do=ditto), Destination (America)

The family had sailed on the ship Gladiator, departing from London, England, under the ship’s Captain Richard L. Bunting. Martin and his family travelled to America along with 209 other immigrants in “steerage”, as most immigrants at that time did. [See "Steerage" below for more insight into their voyage.] Also on board were 11 passengers who stayed in cabins, including three men whose occupation was listed as “gent”.  On the Horst family’s trip six passengers died – which often occurred on these long travels -  including 4-year-old Catherina Grafen; 11-month-old Johan Giltz; 64-year-old Eva Risinger; and 10-year-old Catherine Rettig, all Germans.

[It's interesting to note, when they arrived in August 1846 into New York Harbor there was no central facility for the new immigrants to get information for housing, food, jobs or medical care. So it was common for new arrivals to be robbed, taken advantage of, and mistreated. If they were fortunate when they arrived they may have been assisted by the Deutsche Geselleschaft, the German Emigrant Society that had been organized in the city to help relocate newly arriving Germans, provide information on travel, housing and jobs, and protect them from the bands of thieves that populated the harbor area. German Catholic Churches were also set up to help new immigrants.]

Boarding Packet Ship
ca. 1851

Steerage

"Steerage in the mid-19^th century typically consisted of the area immediately below the main deck of a sailing ship. The ceiling height of the between-deck was usually 6 to 8 feet. The bunks, made of rough boards, were set up along both sides of the ship. The bunks were ordinarily positioned so the passengers lay in the direction of the ship, from fore to aft, but on a few ships the bunks were placed transversely or “thwartships”.Obviously this caused passengers greater discomfort in rough seas. The larger ships might also have an additional row of bunks in the middle. On these ships there was only a small corridor between the bunks. Each bunk was intended to hold from three to six persons, and these were often called family bunks. If passengers were lucky, there would be enough head-room to be able to sit up on their beds.

Families brought with them all of their worldly possessions as they resettled in the new country, but this was only part of what they carried with them onto the ship. They were also required to bring their own mattresses (stuffed with hay or horsehair) for their family’s bunk bed, and sometimes even all their own food and cooking supplies for the long journey. Water would be available but good hygiene was not.

The emigrants were also advised to take along equipment, such as a water pail, (the size according to the needs of each family, about 3 quarts a day per person) cooking pot, coffee kettle and dishes and eating utensils. They had to prepare their own food on the ship's galleys placed up on deck. Often there were no more than a couple of these to be shared by all the passengers. The lines for preparing food could easily become long, when there were several hundred passengers. There are reports about ships where some passengers never made it to the stoves -- it was a matter of the survival of the fittest. A passenger traveling on theAtalanta in 1871 told this from his journey: "Now our place as emigrants was in the hold, on the between deck. Everyone had a chest of food, a keg of milk and one of beer, all of what was stored in the mid of the deck, held in place by ropes."

"From Liverpool each passenger receives weekly 5 lbs. of oatmeal, 2 1/2 lbs. biscuit, 1 lb. flour, 2 lbs. rice, 1/2 lb. sugar, 1/2 lb. molasses, and 2 ounces of tea. He is obliged to cook it the best way he can in a cook shop 12 feet by 6! This is the cause of so many quarrels and...many a poor woman with her children can get but one meal done, and sometimes they get nothing warm for days and nights when a gale of wind is blowing and the sea is mountains high and breaking over the ship in all directions."—Anonymous, New-York Daily Times, October 15, 1851 [This report of conditions in steerage was written by a doctor who had crossed the Atlantic many times on large American packet ships. “Reform must be made,” he wrote, “to better the condition of the poorer classes of emigrants.”]

Steerage ca. 1851

Sometimes only daily rations of wood and water were included in the price of the ticket. The emigrants on board the sail ships were completely dependent on wind and weather. If the weather was bad, the journey could take much longer than anticipated. There were several occasions when the emigrants ran out of food and water before they arrived in port.

Light was admitted through open hatchways and partly through skylights in the deck. There was canvas in the hatchways, but during storms and rough seas these often had to be covered, and if this continued for any length of time the air in the room below occupied by the emigrants often became frightfully bad.

Sometimes those in steerage were not allowed on deck or may only be allowed for a short time. Some captains had a strict routine for the steerage passengers to follow, including what time to wake and sleep, when meals were made and a list of chores to be done daily, including cleaning the steerage floor every morning for the men; other captains didn’t make the effort. Besides watching their children or caring for the sick, women would spend their time cooking sewing or knitting. Games were played and there was often dancing and music provided by those on board. The captain usually held Sunday services on deck.

Illness was common given the poor hygiene, lack of ventilation and cramped living conditions passengers had to endure. Seasickness was very common and there was no medicine to relieve it. Sometimes sick passengers were kept on deck to keep the steerage area cleaner. But with bad weather, passengers stayed in, hatches were closed and ventilation was non-existent. Primitive toilets, if they existed, were kept on deck, with sometimes only one or two available for the several hundred emigrants to use.

Inside a Packet Ship ca.1851
[click to enlarge]

The most common illnesses for passengers to suffer from at this time were cholera, typhoid fever, measles, chicken pox and dysentery. It was very common for passengers to die en route and families had to suffer further when their loved one’s body was dropped into the ocean. Passengers arriving sick with contagious or infectious diseases were quickly quarantined at the Marine Hospital at Staten Island." [From norwayheritage.com]

So now picture it - there were eight Horst family members boarding this ship, carrying with them all of their worldly belongings - two parents and six children, including one infant. They joined over 200 other passengers from various countries, all strangers sharing a very small area inside the dark ship for over six weeks. No electricity or air conditioning. Windows closed during bad weather. People getting sea-sick. Babies crying, Men snoring. People talking. No televisions or radios to keep the children entertained. No showers. Passengers getting sick. Several passengers even dying. Then having a service onboard before dropping the bodies into the ocean. Martin Horst was just 16 years old. What a difference his decision, and his family's decision to come to America made in the lives of his descendants.

The Gladiator & Audubon
An interesting note about the ship - John James Audubon (1785-1851), the renowned French naturalist and painter, sailed with his son John (1812-1862) from Portsmouth, England, to America on August 2, 1836 on the packet Gladiator. With them they brought 260 live birds, 3 pointers and "a brace of tailless (Manx) cats". They reached New York in thirty-three days. Audubon wrote in his journal:

"August 1. Somewhat before the setting of the sun, we went on board, ate and drank, and laid ourselves down in those floating catacombs, vulgarly called berths. When the Gladiator left St. Katharine's Dock she had on our account two-hundred and sixty live birds, three dogs received as a present from our noble friend, the Earl of Derby, and a brace of tailless cats...." [John James Audubon]

By the end of the trip only fifteen of the birds had survived; "the cats are well", Audubon wrote his wife Lucy. One of the pointers had delivered seven puppies.

I can find no picture of the ship Gladiator. 

THURSDAY'S TREASURE - Turn-of-the-Century Christmas in the Horst Home, Mobile, Alabama

Vintage Christmas Postcard  ca. 1900

In my father's family research folders there are thousands of pages of notes, copies of records, letters from family and replies from officials. So it was a wonderful surprise to find a typewritten letter from Regina Lane (1893-1979), my first cousin, 3x removed. She had typed out a nine page "Horst Family Tree", writing as many names, dates and stories as she knew. On a page in the middle of the history is a story she titled "A Little Christmas Fable."

Mary Regina Altice was the oldest of three children born to Emma Elizabeth Horst (1865-1923) and Charles Monroe Altice (1864-1943). Her mother, Emma, was the the fifth of eight children born to Martin Horst (1830-1878) and Apollonia Weinschenk (1829-1908), my great-great-great-grandparents. [My great-great-grandfather was Charles Frederick Horst (1856-1912), Emma's older brother and Regina's uncle.]

Ladies Home Journal
December 1898

Regina married late in life, at age 43. On April 14, 1937, in Mobile, Alabama, she married Maurice Joseph Lane, an insurance man born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was 51 when they married. Regina and Maurice had a 3-month long honeymoon in Europe and lived in Newton, Massachusetts when they returned, a suburb of Boston. Their life together lasted only five short years; Maurice died November 1942. Regina moved back to her hometown of Mobile after his death. In her remaining years she became very involved in service to her church, St. Joseph's Catholic Church, as well as to the community. She was recognized by Pope Pius XII for her service when he awarded her the Pro-Ecclesia-et-Pontificise medal, the highest award that can be bestowed by the Pope to a non-clergy member. Regina died on June 17, 1979, at the age of 85.

In her story, Regina recounts what Christmas was like at her grandmother's home at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. Her grandparents were both immigrants from Germany, the culture that introduced Christmas trees to the American Christmas celebrations. Regina's grandfather had died fifteen years before she was born, but her grandmother along with her aunt Apollonia "Appie" (1870-1942) and cousin Apollonia Manson (1894-1972) still lived in the family home Martin Horst had built after the Civil War.

Here is her story. . .

A Christmas Fable
"Christmas Eve was a most thrilling and exciting time in the Horst family life. Grandma's beautiful mansion was gay with happy grandchildren. Twenty-three she had, of course some lived in Toronto, Canada, and some in Birmingham, who wouldn't be here for the festivities.

Liberty Head Half Eagle
$5.00 Gold Coin (1839-1908)

Each Christmas time Grandma bought the largest Christmas tree she could find. It always reached to the high ceiling and was decorated in garlands of cranberries, strung on long cords, and garlands of pop corn, and many, many exquisite colored glass ornaments and balls, and tiny candle holders, holding small red candles snapped on the branch ends, and all lighted, till we stood, awe struck at the glowing sight. At about dark the door bell rang, and there was Santa Claus tinkling a bell. He was our Aunt Anna and we never even dreamed it, for we all thought he was straight from the North Pole.



Liberty Head Quarter Eagle
$2.50 Gold Coin (1840-1907)

He came into the parlor and shook each one's hand and gave use each an envelope, with a gold $2.50 piece in it. My sister Zoe always got a $5.00 gold piece in hers because Grandma loved her very much. Then we all received stockings stuffed with oranges, apples, nuts, and small gifts. All the older members of the party had wine and fruit-cake, while we had our goodies of a different kind. There was singing and the children danced, and a good time was had by all, then drowsy and tired we thanked our dear Grandma and a merry good-night was wished to all." 

Vintage Postcard ca.1908



FRIDAY'S FAMOUS - John Howard "Jack" Nelson (1929-2009)

John Howard "Jack" Nelson, my first cousin-once removed, was born in Talladega, Alabama, on October 11, 1929.  Jack was the oldest of three children born to Barbara Lena O'Donnell (1909-1996), and Howard Nelson (1908-1985). Barbara was the younger sister of my grandfather, John Huber O'Donnell (1905-1964). Barbara had been raised by their aunt Philomena "Minnie" O'Donnell (1876-1937) after their mother Mary "Mayme" Huber (1873-1913) died from tuberculosis. Their father, John Martin O'Donnell (1865-1937), kept his three young sons, including my grandfather Huber, with him in Birmingham. Barbara married Howard on August 16, 1928, at St. Paul's Rectory in Birmingham; she was 18, he was 20. Jack was their oldest child, followed by Kenneth "Kenny" (born 1933) and Barbara Beverly (born 1939).

Jack Nelson was a highly respected journalist throughout his extraordinary career. In 1960 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. "The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American Hungarian-born publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1917 and is administered by Colombia University in New York City. Prizes are awarded annually in twenty-one categories. In twenty of these each winner receives a certificate and $10,000. The winner of the public service category of the journalism competition the winner is awarded a gold medal which always goes to the newspaper." [from Wikipedia]

The following news article appeared in The Los Angeles Times on October 21, 2009.

Jack Nelson dies at 80; Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter helped raise L.A.Times to national prominence
Nelson's investigative coverage of the civil rights movement and Watergate helped solidify The Times reputation. Its Washington bureau grew into a journalistic powerhouse under his leadership.

"Jack Nelson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, author and longtime Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, whose hard-nosed coverage of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and the Watergate scandal in the 1970s helped establish the paper's national reputation, has died. He was 80.

Nelson died of pancreatic cancer Wednesday at his home in Bethesda, Md., according to his wife, journalist Barbara Matusow.

The veteran newsman was recruited from the Atlanta Constitution in 1965 as part of publisher Otis Chandler's’s effort to transform The Times into one of the country's foremost dailies. An aggressive reporter who had exposed abuses at Georgia's biggest mental institution, Nelson went on to break major stories on the civil rights movement for The Times, particularly in his coverage of the shooting of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo and the slaying of three black students in South Carolina in what is known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

 As the Watergate scandal unfolded during President Nixon's reelection drive, Nelson scored an exclusive interview with Alfred C. Baldwin, III an ex-FBI agent hired by White House operatives, who witnessed the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972. The stories resulting from Nelson's interview with Baldwin were the first to link the burglary "right to the heart of the Nixon reelection campaign," David Halberstam wrote in his 1979 media history, "The Powers That Be."

Named in 1975 to lead the Washington bureau, Nelson oversaw its evolution over the next 21 years into what Gene Roberts Jr., former managing editor of the New York Times and a onetime rival of Nelson's on the civil rights beat, called "arguably one of the finest bureaus ever in Washington."

'Distinguished career'

"Just his work at the Constitution would be a distinguished career for most journalists," Roberts said. "Then add that he was one of the most effective reporters in the civil rights era, all before you even get to him being bureau chief in Washington.

"All in all, I would say he was one of the most important journalists of the 20th century."

A slender man with a Southerner's easy manner, Nelson was born Oct. 11, 1929, in Talladega, Ala., where his father ran a fruit store during the Depression. The younger Nelson drew Talladega's citizens into the shop with vaudevillian humor ("Lady, you dropped your handkerchief," pause, "in St. Louis yesterday"), displaying a talent for connecting with people that would bolster his later success as a reporter.

He said that "being a reporter is a lot like being a good salesman," said Richard T. Cooper, a longtime friend and a Washington bureau editor for Tribune Co., which owns The Times. "You had to be able to sell yourself to people, convince them that they should answer your question or show you the records" or buy a bag of fruit from your father's store.

Nelson and his family moved to Georgia and eventually to Biloxi, Miss., where he graduated from Notre Dame High School in 1947. Without stopping for college (he later studied briefly at Georgia State College), the teenager launched his career by answering an ad for a job at the Biloxi Daily Herald. He was soon called "Scoop" for vigorous reporting on corrupt officials and gambling payoffs.

In 1952, after a stint writing news releases forthe Army, he joined the staff of the Atlanta Constitution. In a series of articles on Georgia's Milledgeville Central State Hospital for the mentally ill, he exposed an array of abuses, including experimental treatments of patients without consent, alcohol and drug abuse by on-duty doctors, and nurses who were allowed to perform major surgery. As a result of his reporting, the hospital was overhauled and Nelson won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 1960.

When he joined the Los Angeles Times five years later, the civil rights movement had been underway for a decade, but The Times "had no coverage of the South. We were doing terribly covering the South," recalled former Managing Editor George Cotliar

He opened The Times' Atlanta bureau and immediately began covering the voting rights demonstrations in Selma, Ala., where on "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, state troopers and local lawmen clubbed and tear-gassed 600 civil rights marchers en route to Montgomery. "He just annihilated every other paper. He was ahead of everyone on everything," said Cotliar, who called Nelson "the toughest, hardest-charging, finest reporter I've known in my 40 years in the business."

Nelson's stories quoted sources critical of then-Gov. George Wallace's failure to protect the marchers. According to Bill Kovach, who covered the protests for the Nashville Tennessean and later was editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the governor singled out Nelson for ridicule, pointing out to white audiences "outsiders like Jack Nelson there of the L.A. Times -- that one there with the burr haircut -- trying to tell us Alabamians how to run our state."

In 1970 Nelson experienced the wrath of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The reporter, after conducting an eight-month investigation, wrote a story about how the agency and police in Meridian, Miss., shot two Ku Klux Klan members in a sting operation bankrolled by the local Jewish community. One of the Klan members, a woman, died in the ambush.

Hoover attempted to suppress the story by smearing Nelson as a drunk, which he was not. ("What they didn't realize," the reporter later quipped to Hoover biographer Curt Gentry, "is that you can't ruin a newspaperman by branding him a drunk.") By defying Hoover, he lost his FBI sources but wrote the article, which ran on Page 1.

Twenty years later, Nelson dusted off his notes from the story and wrote "Terror in the Night" (1993), a book that described the shooting in the context of the Klan's shift from battling blacks to targeting Jews, whom it had begun to regard as the real leaders of the civil rights movement.

Nelson wrote "The Censors and the Schools" (1963) with Roberts; "The Orangeburg Massacre"with Jack Bass; "The FBI and the Berrigans" (1972) with Ronald J. Ostrow; and "High School Journalism in America" (1974).

In 1972, two years after he joined the Washington bureau, Nelson was, according to Halberstam, "one of the two or three best-known and most respected investigative reporters in Washington." But, like most of the Washington press corps, he was frustrated by the Washington Post's dominance of the Watergate break-in story.

The scales briefly tipped in favor of The Times when Nelson received a tip from colleague Ostrow that there was an eyewitness to the Watergate burglary. Nelson began knocking on doors in Connecticut, where Baldwin, the ex-FBI man, and his lawyers lived.

"He was a good reporter because he was always prepared and plain didn't take 'no' for an answer," said William F. Thomas, The Times' editor from 1971 to 1989. "That was his biggest asset . . . . Anybody who looked at the set of his jaw knew they were in for something."

After much back and forth, Nelson was granted an interview with Baldwin, who unwound a fascinating tale of his recruitment by ex-CIA man James McCord, his encounters with G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, and his job monitoring wiretaps on Democratic phones and delivering sealed tapes to Nixon's reelection committee. Baldwin also told of watching from across the street as the burglary at the Watergate complex unfolded and spying Hunt slip away as the police closed in.

When word of Nelson's scoop leaked out, federal prosecutors threatened to revoke Baldwin's immunity, and Baldwin's lawyers pleaded with Nelson to drop the story. Federal Judge John J. Sirica issued a gag order, and then-Washington bureau chief John Lawrence spent a few hours in detention after The Times refused to turn over the tapes of the Baldwin interview.

The Times took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the paper. On Oct. 5, 1972, the paper ran a Page 1 news story by Nelson and Ostrow detailing Baldwin's revelations, as well as a first-person account by Baldwin as told to Nelson.

'A great victory'

Halberstam called the Baldwin story "perhaps the most important Watergate story so far, because it was so tangible, it had an eyewitness, and it brought Watergate to the very door of the White House. . . . It was a great victory for the Los Angeles Times."

Nelson became chief of the bureau in 1975, when it had 15 reporters and three editors. By 1980 the bureau was described by Time magazine as "one of the two or three best" in Washington. By 1996, when Nelson turned the job over to White House correspondent Doyle McManus, it was one of the biggest, as well, with 36 reporters and seven editors.

Known for backing his staff and pushing hard on investigative stories, Nelson made The Times a must-read for Washington's power elite. "The depth and scope of the Washington bureau under Jack was very impressive," said Roberts, the former New York Times managing editor. "We certainly paid attention to what the Los Angeles Times was doing in its Washington bureau."

In a town consumed by politics, Nelson was a well-connected insider who held a coveted seat as a regular commentator on public television's"Washington Week in Review." He brought presidents, senators and members of the House and Cabinet to The Times' offices for regular breakfast sessions with reporters that were broadcast on C-SPAN. "That raised our profile tremendously. . . . We all got our calls returnedfaster," Cooper said.
A Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and founding member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Nelson served as chief Washington correspondent until he retired at the end of 2001. In recent years he taught journalism at USC and produced a report on government secrecy as a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Gernment. In 2005 he served on the independent Commission on Federal Election Reform co-chaired by former President Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

In addition to his wife, his survivors include two children from a previous marriage, Karen and Mike; six grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren." [by Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times, October 21, 2009]

SUNDAY'S OBITUARY - Charles Clinton Flemming Jr. (1884-1935)

Charles Clinton Flemming, Jr.,   Nov 1907
(1884-1933)

Charles Clinton Flemming, Jr., was born in Rome, Georgia, on September 30, 1884. He was the fifth child of ten born to Charles Clinton "Charlie" Flemming (1854-1932) and Elizabeth Agnes "Lizzie" McCaffrey (1858-1922). Charles, my great-great-uncle, changed his name from "Charles Augustus" to "Charles Clinton" as an adult - his older brother was Harry Clinton Flemming (1878-1955), my great-grandfather.

Charles followed his father into the railroad business which was flourishing  in Birmingham in the early 1900's. Charles was an Engineer with the Alabama Great Southern Railroad. The National Museum of American History's website describes the responsibilities of an engineer for a steam locomotive this way:

"Running a steam locomotive combined two responsibilities: managing a highly complex steam boiler and controlling the safe speed of a massive vehicle that could weigh thousands of tons, counting engines and cars. An engineer specialized in one "division" of railroad, 100-150 miles long. The engineer needed to know the location of every signal, every curve, and the slightest change in uphill or downhill grade throughout the route in order to safely control the train." (from http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove)

 On November 26, 1903, Thanksgiving Day, Charles married Marie Sophia Fidger - 108 years ago yesterday. They were both 19 years old when they wed. Marie was born in Kentucky in July 1884. Her parents were William Fidger (1848-1910) and Emma J. Buser (1856-1917). In 1904 Marie gave birth to their only child, Florence Elizabeth. Unfortunately, the young family's happiness was short lived. Marie died in childbirth on September 15, 1908; she was 24 years old. She was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Woodlawn, outside of Birmingham.

Charles and Florence, just 4 years old, moved in with his parents. On January 26, 1910, Charles remarried. His bride was Katherine Aurelia Lambert, born February 11, 1885 in Atlanta, Georgia. Her parents were Joseph Peter Lambert (1862-1924) and Margaret Mary Fox (1870-1935). The wedding took place in Atlanta's West End neighborhood. After their honeymoon Charles and Kate lived with her parents in Birmingham. Her father was Birmingham's City Park Commissioner. Charles' daughter Florence continued living with her Flemming grandparents until she was married.

Charles and Kate had seven children: Mary Agnes "Mike", born November 15, 1910; Dorothy May, born January 1914; Charles Clinton III, called "Hap", born May 15, 1916; James Benjamin and twin brother Joseph Lambert "Joe", born May 5, 1918; Thomas Anthony "Tom", born May 11, 1923; and Katherine Loretta "Kate", born August 9, 1925. Little Dorothy lived less than 18 months, dying on July 4, 1915 - her death certificate said she died from "colitis" after being ill for 3 weeks.

Charles soon began helping his father in his family business "Charlie's Transfer Company". He worked as the business manager by the 1920 Census, a role he continued for many years. His family attended St. Paul's Catholic Church downtown and he was active in the Knights of Columbus.

On Thursday, May 30, 1935, Charles who had been ill and was in a local hospital, died. According to his death certificate the cause of death was a burst appendix. He was 50 years old.

The announcement of his death appeared in the Age-Herald, one of the Birmingham newspapers on page 2.

C. C. Flemming Is Called By Death

Rites Will Be Held Saturday For K. of C. Official

"Charles Clinton Flemming, 50, financial secretary of Birmingham Council of the Knights of Columbus, died Thursday afternoon. Services will be held at the residence, 1422 Thirteenth Place South, at 9 a.m. Saturday, and at St. Paul's Catholic Church at 9:30 a.m. Burial will be in Forest Hill Cemetery, Dillon, of southside, directing.
     Mr. Flemming is survived by the widow, his four sons, Charles C. Jr., Joseph L., James B., and Thomas A.; his daughters Katherine, Mary Agnes, and Mrs. H. T. Kilpatrick; a brother Harry C. Flemming, and two sisters, Mrs. J.B. Thomas and Mrs. W. A. McMurray.
     Mr. Flemming became ill suddenly Monday, and his death followed an emergency operation. He was widely known in business circles, and especially in the transfer business, in which he had been engaged a number of years. In addition to his fraternal work, he was active in church work throughout the state. " (Age-Herald, page 2; 31 May 1935)

A similar article appeared in the following day's Age-Herald, that also included information about the pallbearers: "Active pallbearers will be C.J. Lambert, A.S. Lucas, C.W. Millican, T.A. McGough, F.M. Curtain, W.J. Sullivan, A.L. Stabler, and Vincent Shields. Honorary pallbearers will be members of the Holy Name Society and the Knights of Columbus." (Age-Herald, page 6, 1 Jun 1935)

Charles C. Flemming gravestone
Forest Lawn, Cemetery

 Charles' surviving widow, Kate, lived only three months longer. She died on September 2, 1935. She, too was only 50-years-old at the time of her death. She left behind her six children, ages 10 to 25, who had lost both parents in a short period of time. Charles and Kate are buried at Forest Hill Cemetery, in the lot owned by his former father-in-law, also the final resting place for his young wife Marie and other members of her family.

WONDERFUL WEDNESDAY'S PHOTO - Thanksgiving at the Flemming Home 1942

Thanksgiving 1942

Every Thanksgiving the family of Harry Clinton Flemming (1878-1955) and Pearl Alphonsine Horst (1884-1961) would gather at their home on Birmingham's southside to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner together. Harry, my great-grandfather, would have had a turkey tied up to a stake in his backyard for a few days, and Pearl would cook the feast for all to enjoy. Along with the turkey the meal included oyster dressing, rice and gravy (for those non-dressing-eaters), ambrosia and mince pie for dessert.

The Women of the Family
Front (L-R) - "Grandmother", Susie, Frederica Flemming;
Back - Margaret, Pearl, ODee, Ann

Harry and Pearl had eight children, all born in their home in Birmingham. Their children were Pearl Alphonsine, born March 11, 1907; Susan Elizabeth "Susie", my grandmother, born August 23, 1909; Odalie Felice "ODee", born June 22 1911; Harry Clinton, Jr., born September 25, 1913; Charles Frederick, born January 6, 1916; John Edward "Jack", born April 8, 1918; Margaret Mary, born October 11, 1920; and Ann Marie, born December 23, 1923.

The Men of the Family
Front (L-R) Bill Barriger, Charles;
Back - Frank Selman, "Granddaddy, Jack, Huber O'Donnell,
Harry , George Daly

In 1926 oldest child Pearl got married, and by the following Thanksgiving Pearl and her new husband brought their baby, Pearl Elizabeth "Betty" Barriger (1927-2006), the first grandchild of Harry and Pearl, to the family's gathering. As the years passed the number of grandchildren grew and soon numbered thirty-two - 16 boys and 16 girls, born between 1927 and 1962. Two of Harry and Pearl's sons, Jack and Charles, enlisted and served overseas during World War II. All eight children married and almost all of the children and their families settled in Birmingham - all except daughter ODee. She moved with her husband to Metarie, Louisiana. She came home to visit, along with her children, as often as she could, especially during the holidays.

"Granddaddy" Harry would always be requested to show the grandchildren the turkey tied up in the backyard as Thanksgiving day approached, still alive and awaiting his fate. Of course this was something the grandchildren were intrigued with when they were young.  Eventually Pearl bought her turkey already dead and plucked clean from the grocery store, no doubt making dinner preparation easier once the number of family members continued to increase.

Grandchildren: (left to right) Front - Billy D., Harriet O'D.;
Second Row - Buddy D., Harry F. III, Barbara O'D., Dolly D., Jackie D.. (in arms);
Back Row - Mary Sue O'D., Huber O'D., Dot B., Betty B.

When it was time to eat all the adults present, as many as eighteen when everyone was home, ate at the big table in the family dining room. In the living room a table would be set up for the children to eat their meals. After dinner, the children played in the front yard while the grownups talked inside. Then they would often gather the entire family together and take a picture to remember the day.
Harry died in May of 1955, shortly after celebrating his and Pearl's 49th wedding anniversary. Pearl continued living in their home and celebrating the holidays with her family. Daughter Margaret, her husband and their five young children continued to live with Pearl until her death in September 1961, just a month before I was born. At the time, along with her eight children and thirty-two grandchildren, Pearl was survived by thirteen great-grandchildren, two more on the way (including me). Eventually the number of great-grandchildren of Harry and Pearl would total 64 in all. Thanksgiving continues to be celebrated at the home of Harry and Pearl by their descendants.

I hope Thanksgiving 2011 is a happy one for you and your family, as you enjoy dinner together and make new memories! And don't forget to take that family picture together, one that your descendants will be able to look back on 60 years later, and treasure, too!