Stafford's Olive Tar

From Appleton's Hand-book of American Travel (1856, p. 130)

J.R. Stafford's Olive Tar was a versatile Victorian medicine, first sold in the 1850s. It could be inhaled for its "healing balsamic odors" to soothe the throat and lungs. Or else you could take it "upon sugar" as a sort of makeshift cough syrup. And if you had muscle pain or a skin irritation, you could take whatever of the Olive Tar that you hadn't inhaled or eaten, and rub it on for "its magnetic or concentrated curative powers" of relieving pain.

It was supposed to be "a highly refined extract of the juices of the Olive and the Pine," according to an 1880 advertisement in the National Repository. 

Olive Tar was used by at least one mother in the 1880s to cure whooping cough; it was rubbed on "the throat, the chest and spine...also the pit of the stomach. Then I gave them three or four drops on a lump of sugar to eat..." The mother, who had written to the publication Babyhood, noted that the children had the whooping cough for six weeks even with the Olive Tar, but that it soothed their coughs at night.

Olive Tar was also supposed to work as an ointment for horses, too. Letters in the Working Farmer (1855) testify to its efficacy in healing the backs of horses, as well as cases of croup and asthma in people.

J.R. Stafford also made Iron and Sulphur Powders to "Re-Vitalize and Purify the Blood," to energize the nervous system, invigortate the liver, strengthen digestion, "regulate the Secretions of the Body" and worked on "all Female Weaknesses" in the bargain. But at a dollar it was twice the price of Olive Tar.

Mr. Stafford's establishment was at 442 Broadway, New York on "the east side of the Battery." The 1856 ad above has a rather bucolic picture of Olive Tar HQ, showing how much of the rural was still in New York City in the 1850s.

He also made Iron and Sulphur Powders to "Re-Vitalize and Purify the Blood," to energize the nervous system, invigorate the liver, strengthen digestion, "regulate the Secretions of the Body" and worked on "all Female Weaknesses" in the bargain. But at a dollar it was twice the price of Olive Tar.

Sources:

Advertisement in Scientific American (Volume 3, 1860), p. 143.
Advertisement in the National Repository (Vols. 7-8, 1880), p. 623.
Letter by "M. or F.B." to Babyhood Magazine (Volume 4, 1888), p. 216.

Olive Tar bottle at Odyssey's Virtual Museum.
Olive Tar bottle with label at WorthPoint.

Charles W. Morgan: A 1900 Bonfire of the Vanities

The NY Stock Exchange, 1885 (NYPL)

This is for the 100th COG (Carnival of Genealogy) hosted by Jasia at Creative Gene; the theme is "There's One In Every Family":

This is what I know so far about my great grandfather's brother-in-law - my great great uncle - Charles W. Morgan, whose second wife was my great grandfather's younger sister Mae (née Mary Ann). I was told as a child that Charles had lost a lot of money in the stock market, and that was all I knew. Well, that wasn't the half of it!

Brooklyn Eagle, May 1900: note title of book.

Charles W. Morgan was born in New York City in April 1864. Charles' first wife Rose Caldwell, whom he married in 1891, died in 1895. The following year, he married Mae Hicks, my great grandfather Charles's younger sister.

He had been in the business of "grocer's sundries" from 1886 to 1892, at 122 Broad Street, New York. In 1892  - I don't know why or how -  he  joined the New York Consolidated Stock Exchange. Broad Street is near Wall Street, so perhaps he had longed to be a broker from afar. He must have made some money in the sundries business.

But in 1896 he "failed" as a stockbroker, the Times noted mysteriously in 1900, "on account of about $100." A foreshadowing of failures to come, one might say. He was reinstated - I don't know how or why - about 1899. By 1900, Charles was riding high. He had his own firm, C.W. Morgan and Co., with offices in New York and Philadelphia. He had a house in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn - back then a fancy summer resort - and a  forty-foot steam yacht moored at nearby Bath Beach. He was a member of the Gravesend Bay Yacht Club and had been its president for two years in the mid-1890s. The Brooklyn Eagle noted that

"Charlie," as he was known to nearly everyone, was prominent in social affairs at [Bath Beach and Bensonhurst]. He had a home on Twentieth Avenue, near Benson, where he lived with his wife, a charming woman...Mr. Morgan owned a beautiful yacht and nearly every fine day he formed a party among the summer guests and took trips to the Highlands. He was a great entertainer and was the most popular man among the summer residents of Bensonhurst.

A steam yacht (NYPL)

The good times came to a crashing stop in October 1900. A man named Henry Johnson was granted a court order to serve a "bill of particulars" upon Morgan for "swindling him out of $2,568." Morgan said that he had been "perfectly honest" and that there was nothing further to disclose. Later that month, three journalists at The Wall Street Press - John Evans, Leonard Watson and Ferdinand Gardiner -  came to Morgan's office and showed him an article they had written about the Johnson case which would "damage Morgan's business and which they threatened to have published in a Wall Street paper if they were not paid some money to suppress the matter." Charles Morgan went to the police "had them arrested [for blackmail], the act being detected by means of a marked five hundred dollar bill."

In December 1900 Charles and his bookkeeper Michael Hart were arrested at the Empire Building in Manhattan, on charges of grand larceny and conspiracy to defraud. Assistant District Attorney Byrne had been investigating Morgan. The police went to his office and seized all of Morgan's books and papers. They also seized the papers of discretionary brokers Lewis E. Van Riper and John B. McKenzie, who were involved with Morgan.

Van Riper and McKenzie were the middlemen. They sent out 100,000 circulars a week throughout the US and Canada, urging people to invest at least $200 ($500 would be even better, the letters said). The client would let Van Riper and McKenzie appoint a broker - they recommended Morgan or another man, Chester B. Lawrence. There were promises that the money would be doubled and then doubled again - but the reality was that the client would never see his or her money again.

West End Ave and 85th  (NYPL)

Morgan made $250,000 between 1898 and 1900 from this scheme, the police said. He lived in a luxurious house at West End Avenue and 84th Street (the picture at left shows similar houses at West End and 85th in 1910). He also owned a property at Pleasure Bay in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent money "freely" on luxuries - the steam yacht, the houses, the parties.

The police stated that there was no connection between the blackmail case and Morgan's arrest for grand larceny and fraud - although one wonders how they came to that conclusion, because Henry Johnson seems to have been defrauded by Morgan and his accomplices in what one might call the usual way. Assistant District Attorney Byrne said that Watson, Evans and Gardiner of the Wall Street Press were "thieves" and that "there is a host of thieves down in Wall Street" - which was a reasonable thing to say, given what was going on in Morgan's office.

The news of Morgan's arrest was reported in Boston, Chicago, Hartford, and Atlanta. But seemingly not in Philadelphia, where Morgan kept a branch office in the Drexel Building. Morgan's Philadelphia office manager Albert Booz was very upset and said "It is a thunderbolt out of a clear sky." He had been told nothing, and was unable to reach the New York office. Morgan became silent and invisible. Morgan's bail had been set at $5000, and this was provided by his brother James. When reporters went to Morgan's Manhattan residence at 629 West End Avenue, the door was kept "on the chain" and opened by a woman (possibly Mae, or a housemaid) who said he wasn't there.

In May 1901, Charles was arrested for grand larceny again - same con game, different client. This time the unhappy client was a Mrs. Florence Tobey, who had lost $2000 from the "Tobey estate" in Connecticut.  By August 1901, Charles Morgan had declared bankruptcy. A man called Bert Hanson, his assignor, had the unhappy task of going down to Morgan's office to appease the people who had money owed to them - all two hundred of them.

The next year was no better for Charles and Mae - their 3 year old son, William Whitner, named for one of Charles' partners in Philadelphia, died at Rockville Center, Long Island (their only other child, John, died a young man, in the 1930s). In 1910 Charles, Mae and John were living in Queens, and Charles was working as a real estate agent. By 1930, Charles had become an art appraiser (I haven't found them in the 1920 census yet).

SOURCES

From the New York Times:

"Blackmail Is Charged," Nov. 1, 1900
"Broker Morgan Arrested," Dec. 6, 1900, p. 2.
"Prosecutors Quarrel Over Broker Morgan," Dec. 6, 1900, p. 1.
"The Philadelphia Creditors," Dec. 6, 1900.
"Lien on Morgan's House," Dec. 7, 1900, p. 2.
"Broker Morgan Makes A Statement," Dec. 8, 1900, p. 16.
"The Morgan Assets," Dec. 11, 1900.
"Want C.W. Morgan & Co.'s Books," Dec. 19, 1900.
"Affairs of C.W. Morgan," Aug. 1, 1901, [n.p.]

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

"Prosecutors Quarrel Over Broker Morgan," Dec. 6, 1900, p.
"Morgan Again Arrested," May 25, 1901, p. 1.

US Census:

Charles Morgan household, 1910 US Census, Queens Ward 4, Queens, NY; TG24, Folio 1065, p. 108.
Charles W. Morgan household, 1930 US Census, Brooklyn, Kings, NY; ED 846, [rest of reference goes here, did not copy properly!]

A Little Transition

I'm working on my Carnival of Genealogy post, and hope to post it over the weekend, but this is just a small announcement - I've just switched to a custom domain name for this blog and also Kitchen Retro (soon to be www.kitchen-retro.com)...for now, my old Blogspot addresses should work and redirect you, but apologies for any hiccups, glitches or non-genealogical, virtual brick walls. Fingers crossed!

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy: My Life as a Transcriptionist

Richmond Hill HS; courtesy of Richmond Hill History

This week's topic for Geneabloggers' 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy is volunteerism - specifically, assessing what you have to offer as a volunteer. For me, that would be transcribing records. I've always loved poring over records. When I was in grad school, and I really was supposed to be writing my thesis, I would spend a lot of time making notes on Palmer's Index to the Times, which had one-sentence summaries of the most extraordinary accidents, crimes and goings-on of Victorian London. I still have the ten or so pages I typed out from my notes, and even wrote a history post inspired by one entry a good 15 years later (it's this post, about Milo Morgan and the Palpitating Bosom).

Several years ago I transcribed some records for the Brooklyn Genealogy Information Page, and for the British Civil Registration Index project, both at Rootsweb. The Brooklyn transcription work was especially enjoyable - and as a bonus, I found my grandfather in the first batch I did, in the list of 1909 graduates of Richmond Hill High School in Queens. He started working as a stenographer in New York City the same year - at age sixteen.

I stopped transcribing, I guess, because (a) I needed a break and (b) other stuff (writing and real life) got in the way. But I'm thinking that, busy as life is, I might start doing this again. Maybe I'll look into volunteering over at FamilySearch, where there is a big project going.

The other thing I've been contemplating for some time is to transcribe the vital records that I come across while doing history research (in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, for example) and posting them on a stand-alone page on this blog - or possibly starting another blog of transcriptions to attach to Virtual Dime Museum. I could also add in all the census records I've come across, too - both for my family and for people I've written about. A resolution for 2011, perhaps. But first up, another sort of transcription project: a Genealogy Links page, which I have also been meaning to do for some time.

Black Sheep Sunday: The Man Who Ran Off to the Mexican War

What fun to rediscover Geneabloggers, and genealogy in general! For Black Sheep Sunday, let me introduce you to my 3rd great grandfather. Last week I started  - yet again - working on chipping away at the maze of brick walls that he left when he abandoned his family sometime in the 1833-1847 period. Every once in awhile I get out the Moses V. Williams folder and give it yet another try. One day I'll find him, I know.

Another thing I do know about him is that he was a Black Sheep. Not as flashy a Black Sheep as some of my 19th century Brooklyn ancestors. And not a semi-famous one like Herodias Long (who obtained the first divorce in Rhode Island in the 17th century, for starters), Reverend Francis Doughty, or Anthony Van Salee (a very "difficult" resident of New Amsterdam). I'll get to them on other Sundays. I do believe I will be able to keep this going for several months at least.

Battle of Churubusco, probably not including Moses V. Williams (Wikipedia)

Moses V. Williams was born about 1797 in Pennsylvania, probably in Chester County. He married Rebecca Miles, daughter of Nathaniel and Mary (Frick) Miles on December 4, 1820 in her home town of Coventry, Chester County. They were living in Tredyffrin township by 1821, and were still there in 1828 when my great great grandmother was born on December 17th of that year.*

In 1825, Moses V. Williams was arrested for debts incurred against Dr. Isaac Davis and "certain [other] persons in certain sums of money." He listed his possessions as:

2 Beds and bedding. One small table. 1 pot. 1 kettle and 1 frying pan. 2 chairs. 1 stove. Kitchen furniture not exceeding in value 3 dollars.

Moses had this to say about his debts:

Petitioner states that he has a wife and child dependent upon him for support. That for eighteen months during the years of 1822 and 1823 he was unable to pursue any kind of Business in consequence of sickness of himself and family he is therefore wholy [sic] unable to pay any of his debts.

But, the court (and his debtors) must have been thinking: this is 1825, and you have had two years to recover from sickness and pursue work! Moses was threatened with prison if he did not repay these people (there were 16 people altogether and he owed amounts between $4 and $41). I don't know if he went to prison; I do know that he was still in Chester County in 1833, but after that - who knows? Perhaps he ran up more debts and disappeared. Perhaps he went to Philadelphia - or out west. I don't know (yet).

The last record I have of Moses is a document dated December 21, 1847 which required Rebecca Williams to pay $200 to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from the estate of Moses V. Williams, "late of the City of Philadelphia." This seems to indicate that he died - or was thought to have died - sometime around 1847. I did not find him in the FamilySearch database of Philadelphia Death Certificates 1803-1915, by the way.

My grandmother was Moses' daughter Sarah Elizabeth's favorite granddaughter, and she lived with her for a year as a child. She told me that Sarah Elizabeth said that her father "had run off to the Mexican War." This seems unlikely to me, based upon his age and location, but it is a possibility. It's equally likely that this was a story to cover up his either abandoning the family, and/or dying in prison - or somewhere else. 

*Although family tradition and her death certificate state her place of birth as Philadelphia, so the family may have lived there during at least part of 1828.

Sources:

Marriage Notice from the American Republican [West Chester, Pa]: Moses V. Williams of Charlestown m. Rebecca Miles of Coventry December 4 1820 by the Rev. John Price [of the 'Dunker' Church in Coventry]
Chester County, Pa Insolvency Papers, Bond, August 1, 1825 Moses V. Williams
Chester County, Pa Insolvent Debtor Papers, Petition of Moses Williams for the benefit of the Insolvent Laws, September 12, 1825, #16 Moses Williams.
Chester County, Pa Estate of Moses V. Williams, dec'd, December 21, 1847.

Book Review - America:The Story of Us

America: The Story of Us; An Illustrated History
Kevin Baker (with an introduction by President Barack Obama)
A&E, 2010; 416 pp.

When I was studying American history in high school, the textbook that we used was an enormous, thick text by a famous historian who shall remain nameless. We had to read at least 50 or 60 pages for every class. Now, history was one of my favorite subjects. I had wanted to be a historian since I was in grade school - in between wanting to be an entomologist or a violinist, neither of which worked out since (a) I became frightened of insects, and (b) had to give up violin lessons after a year for various tiresome reasons.

But our American history textbook was so dry, so boring -  so purely terrible - that I skimmed and dreamed my way through those 50 pages three times a week. And then, even though our teacher was a good one, I really didn't get American history. I knew the basic facts, all right - I had to, to pass the tests - but the incredible, unique story of the creation of America - I missed that altogether.

Which brings me to the point of this piece, Kevin Baker's wonderful take on the story of how we became Americans, America: The Story of Us. It is written in an entertaining, yet informative, compact manner, and is a companion volume to the History Channel series. The early part of the book follows chronological history pretty closely. From the 19th century on, Baker organizes the story of Americans in terms of social movements - pioneers spreading westward, booms and busts, the differences between people in urban and rural areas, rather than history in the conventional linear sense. For the most part, this works well, but assumes that the reader is familiar with the background to, say, the war in Vietnam; Baker focuses on the way that Vietnam affected us as a nation, assuming that we know how and why the US entered that war. Up through the end of the Civil War, enough explanations are woven into the narrative that even the novice historian can follow the story thoroughly.

Lavishly illustrated and sprinkled with highlighted text, this is an enjoyable book to read. I particularly liked the section on the Revolutionary War, which really made that time come alive for me. Overall, I recommend this book to those interested in history that focuses upon people rather than things (you should not expect much about art or literature, for example) - and for anyone who was put off by conventional high school history texts.

Note: I received a copy of America: The Story of Us for free, in exchange for reviewing it on this blog, but (as is always the case with the book reviews here) the opinions expressed herein are entirely my own.

The Knickerbocker Cottage

NYPL Digital Gallery

The Knickerbocker Cottage was a restaurant located at 456 Sixth Avenue, New York (between 10th and 11th Streets.

The building was originally the Varian farm house. In 1850 a man named Peter Connor opened a road house there, and in 1863 it was leased by Captain William Fowler. Fowler named it the Knickerbocker Cottage and, according to the New York Times, it then "became a popular, quiet resort for merchants and  sporting men." ["Sale of the Knickerbocker Cottage," NYT, March 19, 1885]. In the 1870s it was a popular meeting place for New York Freemasons. This photo on Shorpy, from 1910 shows the former Knickerbocker House, by then Mouquin's Restaurant - changed, but still recognizable. There is still a restaurant at this address, almost 150 years after Captain Fowler opened the Knickerbocker - but it is now the French Roast Café.

Odd genealogical side note: While researching this address, I came across a piece in an 1864 Scientific American about Hicks' Gold Washer and Separator, patented by a C.D. Hicks. One of the contacts for more information on the Gold Washer was J.S. Hicks living at 456 Sixth Avenue. My grandmother was a New York Hicks, and most New York City area Hickses are related one way or another through descent from John Hicks, their 17th century emigrant ancestor. I haven't looked C.D. and J.S. up yet, but for now am claiming  a tentative, and distant, cousinship with them.