The Bedford Black Sheep

This post is essentially a précis of a few future posts about a Hicks cousin - yes, another one. His story involves a notorious Brooklyn gang, the New York vaudeville and burlesque scene in the 1910s, and some side trips to upstate New York and Omaha, Nebraska, too.

Garrett Wilson was my grandmother Grace Hicks' second cousin. The picture of him here is a detail from a photograph showing Garry with Grace and her siblings and their goat cart, taken in 1896. Garry was 14 at the time; my grandmother was 7.  Garrett was born in 1882, the son of Franklin P. and Hannah (Van Duyne) Wilson. He was named for his grandfather Garrett Van Duyne, who died in 1858 at the age of 31 (my great grandfather, Charles Garrett Hicks, was named for him, too).

Hannah (Van Duyne) Wilson died when Garrett was only 3, in 1885. His father married again in 1889, to Isabelle Tichenor, and had another son, Franklin P. Wilson, junior, born about 1892. Garrett lived with his Van Duyne grandmother  from about 1892 to 1900; I'm not sure if he was sent away because of family problems, but I suspect that.

In the summer of 1902, when he was first arrested, he was 20 years old. He was a natty young man "wearing clothing of expensive material, cut in the latest fashion, and having the appearance of being very well connected." He was charged with check fraud and tip selling at the Brighton Beach racetrack. But that was only part of what he had been up to. His step-grandmother explained to a persistent Brooklyn Eagle reporter that Garrett had told them that he was part of a group of disaffected young middle-class men known as the Bedford Gang.

This was news to me. Then I found his obituary - he died in 1916, at the age of 33 - which omitted the criminal career and spoke only of his 12 years in vaudeville and burlesque theater. I didn't know about that, either - until yesterday.

Fulton and Bedford, 1942 [NYPL]

I'll tell you about the Bedford Gang in a soon-to-come post. I'm not sure when, because I have plenty of research to do. A preliminary search in the papers shows that they were quite notorious in Brooklyn in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

About 1905, Garrett joined a burlesque troupe, which I want to write about, too. He became quite a well-known part of the vaudeville and burlesque world in Brooklyn and New York.

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In the months to come, I am also going to write about another Hicks I discovered recently - Charles Hewlett Hicks, a brother of my gg grandfather Daniel Losee Hicks. He was one of the original 49ers and was in California by about 1851. I've been able to find out a fair amount about his life there, and it is quite a story.

I see a book in all of this: the Gold Street Murder, the Gold Rush, vaudeville, gangs, arsenical tragedies, brawling photographers, divorce and scandal* - all in one reasonably small family group. I've been thinking about this and working on it for a while. And every time I find another startling story, I think: you really have to do this.

I have another book project going, too - also having to do with New York history.** So I'm struggling with the problem of how to balance blogging and freelancing with that. If I don't post as much on some of my other blogs, well - that's why!

So what I write here will be the shorter version (partly because a blog is no place to write long chapters and also because, yes, I would like to have an audience for a future book!). As I work on all this, I'll post short, interesting glimpses of the past that I find - like the last post about Emily Speakers.

*I won't link all the stories, but the links will take you to a few of the main ones.

**I'll just tell you that it has to do with women's history and hasn't really been done before - I think. That's all I want to say for now!

Whoever Harbors Her

East New York in 1857 [NYPL Digital Gallery]

I found this story when I was looking up something about my Losee ancestors in an 1852 Jamaica Long Island Farmer, over at the fabulous Old Fulton NY Postcards. And I couldn't stop wondering about Emily and her family - and what the story was, and whatever happened to her:

NOTICE:

LEFT HOME on the 19th inst., my daughter Emily, 13 years old, small of her age, dark complexion, hair short and black eyes, had on a calico bonnet, green shawl, light blue frock, brown apron, blue quilted petticoat, black stockings, and heavy shoes just mended. Whoever harbors her after this notice will be prosecuted according to law. Any one returning her will confer a great favor and the thanks of her parents.
-- ISAAC G. SPEAKERS, East New-York, March 22d, 1852. -- Long Island Farmer (Jamaica, NY)

According to the 1850 census* - the only one I found Emily in - she had been born in New Jersey, like her parents and siblings - in 1839. Isaac and Cornelia (Van Riper) Speakers were from New Jersey,** but were in  Flatbush, Brooklyn by 1850. They soon moved on to East New York, as we know from Isaac's notice. And of course, something happened there. Something or someone that caused 13 year old Emily to leave home - either voluntarily or not, we don't know.

Bigger version of map here

East New York is a neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn, bordered by Cypress Hills Cemetery in the north, Jamaica Bay on the south, Queens to the east and railroad tracks running parallel to Sinderen Avenue in the west. It grew out of a town called Broadway Junction which developed in the 1850s at the point where the Brooklyn and Jamaica Plank Road (the future Fulton Street) and several train lines met at a hilly point between Brooklyn and Queens. In 1843 one guide book describes East New York as a part of Flatbush with

400 residents, 50 dwelling houses, 2 Dutch Reformed churches, 3 taverns, 3 stores, 1 large clock manufactory propelled be steam, a suspender and boot web manufactory; besides several other kinds of mechanic work shops. [A Gazetteer of the State of New-York; J. Disturnell, Albany, 1843, p. 150]

In other words, not a large place where people disappear into the urban sprawl and bustle.

In the map (above right), East New York is the pink area directly above Jamaica Bay. But no map can tell us what happened to Emily - or where she went, and why. As with so many of the Victorian New Yorkers I write about here, I have to end by saying: I don't know what happened next. But I'll keep looking. Isaac's description of her was so vivid. You can just picture her  - small, dark-haired, wearing that green shawl and calico bonnet.Walking in those heavy, newly mended shoes down a road like those in the picture at the top of this post: lined with small wooden houses, in sight and hearing of Jamaica Bay and all those railroad tracks and newly built avenues. Maybe she is stepping onto a steam train headed west into downtown Brooklyn. Maybe after that, she will take a ferry across the river to New York. How quickly she disappears. And Isaac did not put a notice in the paper again - not in the Long Island Farmer. Nothing in the Brooklyn or New York papers, either.

And - as I have said before also - if I do find out any more, I'll let you know.

* Source: 1850 US Federal Census (Population Schedule), Flatbush, Kings, NY,  Dwelling 290, Family 310, Isaac J. Speakers household, page 84.

**"Cornnelia [sic] Van Riper [married] to Isaac G. Speakers both of Manchester 12-4-1845"- from the  Paterson Intelligencer, transcribed here at VANRIPER-L archives at Rootsweb.