Don't Forget To Write: Planning For the New Year

NYPL Digital Gallery (detail)

The January Carnival of Genealogy's theme is this: My genealogy research/writing plan for 2011. And that is exactly what I need to make, a plan for future reference.

In 2011 I am going to try and balance my need for a variety of projects with the need to focus on one or two. This sounds contradictory, I know. But I am interested in many things, and like switching from, say, 1950s advertising to true crime in Victorian Brooklyn to writing about chocolate fountains and duct tape wallets (two of my recent freelance-writing subjects). As some of you probably know, I juggle 3 blogs, I freelance-write to make money, and have a non-fiction and a fiction writing project in varying stages of on-the-go. Oh, and am actively doing genealogical research when I can fit it in. But of course, I can't do everything! So I am just going to list everything and make sure I prioritize things (which means letting some things go a bit) in 2011:

1. The blogs: one post a week per blog, ideally. That's three posts a week. I used to update all three every day, a couple of years ago, so this is way better. Kitchen Retro may get updated more often, though, as it is my most popular blog and the easiest to write. The blogs will recede a little bit, though, I think.

2. The freelancing: enough to generate some income but not so much that I don't have time for anything else. I'll keep an eye on this. This can recede as necessary, like the blogs.

3. The non-fiction project: Yes, here's where it connects to the COG topic. Actually I have at least 3 ideas for non fiction book projects but I am going to commit to the one about my Victorian Brooklyn family and their exploits. To do: print out the relevant posts from this blog and outline what else needs to be done to expand these. And write about the people I haven't written about yet. Two quite sensational gentlemen, to be exact. I wasn't entirely comfortable writing about them here. But I will include them in the book.

4. The fiction project: The only way I'm going to do this is by keeping it low key and fun and not talking too much about it. Working on it a couple of times a week for now, as I've been doing this month. It does connect up with working on #3 and #5, though. So much fun, I can't tell you. Shhhh! -- that's all I have to say about that...

5. The genealogical research: I'd like to keep digging deeper into the Victorian Brooklyn ancestors' lives (see #3). I want to solve some puzzles in my Barnett line this year; I know what steps to take next, I just need to do them. There are some German ancestors I recently discovered - 18th century actors and writers - and I want to post about them. Also there is something quite interesting developing re one of my English ancestors-in-law. And I also resolve to get all my research organized on RootsMagic (which I am learning my way around, right now).

One last thing:  I will absolutely cut this list way down as time goes on. This is a hopelessly ambitious lot of things to do, I know. Not realistic. But it is good to see it all written out, anyway.

And I wish you all a spectacularly Happy New Year, and am looking forward to reading about your plans, too!

The Christmas Chignon

NYPL Digital Gallery

May I present to you the Christmas Chignon  - which makes your hair look exactly like a Christmas plum pudding, right down to the sprig of holly, which appears to be burning.

It is from Punch (December 28, 1867) and pokes fun at the elaborate chignon styles that women were wearing in the late 1860s. The term comes from the French "chignon de cou," or nape of the neck, and chignon hairstyles were originally worn in ancient Greece, at which time they were quite simple. In the 1860s they were anything but that, according to a (fictitious) irritated letter writer with the suitable name of Crabwood Sowerby:

The modern chignon, even if natural, is an excess of hair arrnaged in a grotesque form...The modern and artificial chignon is...justifiable by no rule of taste, except by the necessity of concealing a large wen, or other excrescence. [Punch, March 17, 1866, p. 118]

They were usually made of false hair, since the fashion was to have a huge chignon (big as a Christmas pudding, in fact), as this 1874 comic piece suggests:

The Tomkinses, for example, have a brother who means well, and who is old enough to know better; but he is always making unhappy remarks. In the middle of dinner he will call across the table - "Oh, Eliza, I took that chig. of yours to the hairdresser. He says it's all right, and you shall have it back to-morrow."

Library of Congress

Young Mr. Arundel, whom Eliza admires so much - in fact, she is quietly setting her chignon at him - looks aghast, both on account of the delicate nature of the communication, and also at finding that the adorable chignon is false. Poor Eliza is so overcome that she can say nothing.  [Eneas Sweetland Dallas, "Putting One's Foot In It," Once A Week, Jan. 31, 1874, p. 105].

The 1866 Punch cartoon on the right is entitled "A hint for the horticultural society. Great show of  'chignons.' Medal awarded to the finest grown specimen."

As for real Christmas puddings, the ones that did not reside at the napes of ladies' necks, we will look at them in another post.

Book Review: Kingdom Under Glass

Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure and One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Greatest Animals
Jay Kirk
New York: Henry Holt, 2010; 387 pp.

Carl Akeley (1864-1926) was a noted taxidermist, sculptor and at the end of his life, a conservationist who is remembered chiefly for his contribution to American natural history museums. A wing of the Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, is named in his honor.

Kingdom Under Glass is written as what might be described as a biographical novel - that is to say, it is the story of Akeley's life written (mainly from his perspective) as an imaginative work that is rooted in historic fact and an incredible amount of research (I particularly enjoyed reading the meticulous notes at the end of the book). The writing style often resembles that of a rather florid Victorian adventure novel. This generally works well, though it took me awhile to get used to this.

We follow Akeley through his early years in Brooklyn through his rise to fame as an innovative taxidermist, and through his several trips to Africa. Before Akeley, animal exhibits in museums were stuffed with sawdust and shown in unimaginative rows. Akeley was the first taxidermist to recreate animals in such a way as to make them seem alive (he used his skills as a sculptor, using plaster and clay, to do this). It was also his idea to show animals in exhibits that meticulously recreated their natural habitats, and posed together in lifelike groups.

By the end of his life, Akeley was no longer interested in killing examples of species as a way of preserving knowledge about them, but in conserving them. Akeley worked to establish a preserve for gorillas in what was then known as the Belgian Congo. In 1925, King Albert I of Belgium later established the Albert (later Virunga) National Park, in large part due to Akeley's influence.

Carl Akeley (Wikipedia)

I was very interested in the story of Akeley's first wife Delia Julia Akeley (1875-1970). Delia, nicknamed Mickie, was as fascinating and compelling than Carl himself. She had been Akeley's assistant in taxidermy for many years, since meeting him when she was a teenager, and became a skilled naturalist, too. After the Akeleys' divorce in 1923, she became the first woman to lead a museum expedition in Africa. She led safaris there in 1924-5 and 1929-30 under the aegis of the Brooklyn Museum.

Mickie, alas, all but disappears from Kingdom Under Glass, under a shadow of what seems to be impending madness, after the Akeleys' 1923 divorce. I understand that this book is written primarily from Akeley's viewpoint (although there are sections told through the eyes of other people, including Theodore Rooselvelt, a safari partner of Akeley's, and Mickie herself). Still, I would have liked to have heard more about Mickie's later life. After all, Victorian novels usually contained a final chapter telling the reader what happened to all the characters. A final chapter of that sort - or a Cast of Characters at the beginning - would have been welcome. I also would have liked to have seen photographs of Akeley, the other people, and the places mentioned in the book.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Kingdom Under Glass. It is an exciting and informative book, exhaustively researched, and written in an innovative manner. It illuminates the life of an unusual and important figure in the history not only of taxidermy, but of the rise of museums, the conservation movement, and the study of African wildlife.

Note: I was provided with a copy of this book by Henry Holt and Co., but as always, the review and all the opinions in it are mine alone.

The Brooklyn Midnight Assassin

In May 1867, William T. Skidmore, my great great great uncle, was an ex- police officer, widower of Susannah (Hicks) Skidmore and the father of four children.

On the night of May 21, 1867, he shot English inventor* William Bishop Carr with an air gun,  at the corner of Gold and Johnson Streets in Brooklyn. He was observed killing Carr, was caught and sent to the Raymond Street Jail. He committed suicide while incarcerated, on June 19, 1867.

During his time in prison, my great great grandparents, Daniel and Mary Hicks, started a campaign to have the body of Daniel's late sister, Skidmore's wife Susannah, exhumed, because they suspected that Skidmore had poisoned her with some dubious punch.They were aided in their detective work by Daniel's brother Lemuel, who wrote a series of letters to the Williamsburgh Times about the matter (I will be locating these in the future, of course).

I was inspired to revisit this topic here because I was looking at fultonhistory.com this week - what an amazing resource it is, too, full of scanned historic newspapers from New York State. I found some illustrations in the National Police Gazette, of William Skidmore and of the murder scene as imagined by the Gazette's artist, who has called Skidmore the "Brooklyn Midnight Assassin." Both illustrations appeared on the front page of the June 1, 1867 edition of the Gazette. 

I am continuing to research this case with an eye to writing at least a book chapter (if not a book) someday about it. I intend to try and solve the mystery of Aunt Susannah's death, if possible - if not in a non-fiction milieu, then perhaps in a mystery novel.

I know I've posted the links before, but just for good measure, here they are again:

The Gold Street Murder:

Part 1: The Meanest Sort of Snake
Part 2: An Extraordinary Disclosure of Vice
Part 3: Like a Shadow Along the Air

I've just reread these three posts and realize that I have plenty of work to do - I can see that I have left a lot of interesting details out. But since this blog is a research log of sorts, and a place where I like to think about future projects, I will use them as first drafts.

*Carr was the inventor of the "Return Ball" - a small rubber ball on an elastic string, attached to a wooden paddle (they were still being made when I was a child in the 1960s, I remember playing with one). Mark Twain commented on how popular the toy was and that it had made Carr a wealthy man, but that "the fates favored him only to deceive":

But behold, an ex-policeman waylaid the favorite of fortune in the streets of Brooklyn at dead of night a week ago, and shot him to death with an air-gun. Riches will still take wings and fly away, and so also life - and nothing can assist them in their flight better than an ex-policeman.

-- Mark Twain, "Street Livelihoods," The Daily Alta California, San Francisco, June 2, 1867.

The Jenny Lind Sewing Stand

Here is a charming Christmas (or New Year's) present suggestion from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of December 7, 1850, when the Swedish singer Jenny Lind was at the height of her popularity. That September, during her American tour, she had given two concerts at Castle Garden, New York, under the aegis of P.T. Barnum. So anything with her name attached to it was all the rage.

Jenny Lind in 1850 (Wikipedia)

Father Christmas and Young New Year are dressed rather like a Brooklyn father and son doing a spot of shopping at John Blackwell's Atlantic Street emporium - I like the little top hat on the New Year especially. Blackwell also had a store across the river in Manhattan, at 31-33 Attorney Street; and if you wrote him a note, he would make sure the stand was delivered to the lucky lady in question - no need to carry it through the streets like Father Christmas and Co.

The sewing stand consisted of a table with drawer(s) for storage, and sometimes (as in the Jenny Lind) a bag underneath for holding fabric. At Burchard Galleries, there is a lovely Dutch sewing stand  from the first half of the 19th century, that looks a bit like the Jenny Lind.

More Jenny Lind inspired entities - including my 3rd great uncle's saloon - right over here.

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories: Marzipan in New York

NYPL Digital Gallery

My German great grandparents and their family adored marzipan at Christmas - it wouldn't have been a proper holiday without it. Marzipan is an almond paste confection that is molded and tinted to look like fruits, vegetables, and little animals (pigs are a favorite for some reason). The old English word for this candy is Marchpane or "March bread" which is what the German can be roughly translated to mean, although there is quite a bit of dispute about the origins of both the name and the almond paste.

A 1903 Times article suggested that every Christmas stocking  in New York should contain a lucky marzipan pig (Glucksschwein) and perhaps a few marzipan potatoes. There was a German saying "Ich hab schwein gehabt" meaning literally, I have a pig - which meant, I'm lucky. This may originally have been a farm expression, a place where having a pig was a really good thing (especially in the winter).

Wikipedia

Since there were a great many German immigrants in New York City by the end of the 19th century, there was quite a call for marzipan there around Christmas time. The novelist Catherine Owen wrote in Gentle Breadwinners (1888, p. 45):

"Marzipan! What is that?"

"Oh, a favorite German goody. I know of Germans in New York who send to Hamburg for it, and others who get it at the German bakeries, but sugar being cheaper than almonds it is apt to have too large a proportion, and to be like plaster."*

And not only German New Yorkers liked their marzipan. The New York Times reported in 1903 that marzipan "is becoming better known each year":

Wikipedia

The best of it is  imported and appears in forms that are works of art in a small way - in the shape of fruits and vegetables, tiny cabbages, cauliflowers, peas, strawberries, cherries, all sorts and kind of things, including the more solid foods - bread and rolls, sides of beef, ham, the German sausage, and the lucky pig in all sizes and conditions.

The fruits and vegetables were the most expensive - $1 to $1.50 a pound in 1903; you could also buy a round marzipan cake with designs impressed on them "put up in round boxes." And not only German bakeries and delicatessens sold it but department stores, too. The Times also noted that one favorite German recipe using marzipan was a "delicious tart" with a marzipan crust, filled with raspberry or lemon cream and topped with marzipan crust and decorated with - you guessed it - marzipan fruits. Enough, in other words, to delight even the greatest almond-paste enthusiast.

*But of course, Great Grandfather would have taken care to go to the very best German bakery, which would not sell marziplaster! My great grandmother, who was a formidable lady, would have made sure he did. Back in the 1920s when he was doing this, he may have gone to the Vienna Model Bakery at Broadway between 10th and 11th Streets. This sounds Austrian, but it probably had German pastries as well. It sold "chocolate, tea, ice cream, Vienna ices and soda waters" in addition to baked goods, according to Picture History. My image is from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery, though - link under the image. 
 
Source: "A German Holiday Delicacy," New York Times, December 13, 1903.

This is for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories meme created by Thomas and Jasia in 2007, and now hosted through Geneabloggers.

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories: The Christmas Tree

I've used this image before, I think - but it's so much fun! From LOC.

This is for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories meme created by Thomas and Jasia in 2007, and now hosted through Geneabloggers:

We always had a real tree when I was growing up. My mother's parents always had had a real one, too. My maternal grandfather was of German descent and as you probably know, the Christmas tree originated in Germany (and was brought to England  - and popularized there - by Prince Albert, in 1840). You simply had to have a real, alive tree. My great grandfather was always very correct, a little bit stern and serious. Everything had to be just so. You'd never know that he had jumped ship in New York Harbor on New Year's Day 1886, when he was only 17, running off from the ship and from his old life in Hamburg. I wonder if he thought about that at Christmas - for it took about 2 weeks to cross the Atlantic. He must have left home right before Christmas, and spent it at sea.

As far as I know, though, he never talked about it. He did go into New York, from Queens, to get lots of Christmas goodies every year. I'm not sure where he got the family tree, but Ozone Park, where they lived, was still fairly rural. So it was probably not too difficult. What was difficult was getting the tree into a stand. My grandfather hated doing it, and I expect my great grandfather did too. A family tradition!

My mother was horrified by fake trees - a tree simply had to be real, you see. And I always agreed with her. Still do, in a way. And yet - and yet. I like our little artificial tree. It is easy, doesn't shed, the cats don't slurp at piney tree water from a metal holder that wiggles no matter how much you try and fix it...Still, I don't know what she would think of ours nowadays. Artificial, yes - but real enough as a symbol, when we put everything on it that we've collected as a family over the years. And the cats settle down underneath it so happily - they love cozy spaces, and this is just perfect for them. I am sure they think that it is just for them.