Theodore Roosevelt

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Old Print Article: “Ezra Meeker, Last Pioneer Of The Covered Wagon Era, Succumbs In West At 97,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1928)

July 16, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Evan Meeker, 1921.

Showing his wagon train to President Theodore Roosevelt, 1908.

Showing his wagon to President Theodore Roosevelt, 1908.

With President Calvin Coolidge,

Meeting President Calvin Coolidge, 1924.

Evan Meeker, Detroit, 1828, last photo.

Evan Meeker, Detroit, 1928, last photo.

When Ezra Meeker passed away 86 years ago, he took with him a lot of institutional memory–and the institution was America. A pioneer who traveled the Oregon trail in his youth, he spent much of his dotage trying to ensure people would remember those who endured such treacherous crossings to open up the country. The article that announced his death in the December 3, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Seattle, Wash.–Ezra Meeker, 97, one of the last of the pioneers of the covered wagon era, died here this morning of after an illness of several months.

Meeker clung tenaciously to life until the end, holding on by sheer will power after physicians and relatives had given up. He had been at the point of death in a Detroit hospital for two months before returning here eight weeks ago. He had grown gradually weaker and when his condition became alarming it was impossible to move him to a hospital.

Last Thursday the pioneer was reported to have shown great improvement and hopes were held momentarily by his doctors that he would recover and live to reach his 98th birthday this month. He was in fine spirits over the weekend and his pulse and temperature were about normal. Late yesterday there was a turn for the worse and he sank rapidly.

Meeker was bitterly disappointed because illness in Detroit had prevented him from returning here in time to register for the recent general election. It was the first time he had missed since he voted in the first territorial election in Washington in 1854.

The pioneer, who brought his bride and a seven-weeks-old child West over the old Oregon trail by ox team in 1852, had intended to begin a second automobile tour of the trail when he was forced to enter the Detroit hospital in the first serious illness of his long and eventful life.

A son, Marvin J. Meeker, and three daughters, Mrs. Carrie Osborne and Mrs. Ella Templeton of Seattle, and Mrs. Roderick McDonald of Peshastin, Wash., survive him.

Meeker was born at Huntsville, Ohio, on December 29, 1830. After a boyhood there and an apprenticeship in a printing office in Indianapolis, her married in 1851 and struck out by ox team for Iowa to homestead a farm. A severe winter there induced the young couple to join a wagon caravan for Oregon and California in 1852. Months of hardship behind them, the Meekers reached Portland, Ore., in October of that year. Trail instinct kept the Meekers on the move until they settled at Fort Steilacoom, south of the present site of Tacoma, where Meeker kept a store from 1853 to 1862. Then the Meekers moved to Puyallup, where the pioneer became interested in hop growing, later going to London, England, for four years as agent of the hop growers of the Pacific Northwest.

Meeker was the author of several books on pioneer life, although he had but four months schooling in his life.

Meeker retraced the Oregon trail with an ox team in 1906 and four years ago flew over the route in an airplane piloted by Lieut. Oakley G. Kelley.

His last years were spent in obtaining recognition of the heroism of the Oregon trail pioneers by inducing communities along the route to erect suitable markers. In 1926 President Coolidge signed an act authorizing the issuance of a special half dollar to further interest in the building of monuments along the trail. Meeker was received at the White House by both Mr. Coolidge and President Roosevelt.”

 

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A Brief Note From 1911 About Apes Dining

September 3, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the May 16, 1911 New York Times:

“The New York Zoological Society celebrated its second annual members’ day yesterday at the Zoological Garden. The members of the society are important adjuncts of the New York Zoo. Dues of members help to support the Zoo. There are 1,469 members paying $10 a year, in addition to the life members, benefactors and founders. The meetings are held at the Zoo, so that the members may see and appreciate all the interesting features, which are due to a great extent to them.

This year they met in the new Administration Building, which was opened last November and to which members are always admitted. The National Collection of Heads and Horns, one of the finest in the world, and which occupies a large part of the second floor of the building, had a new feature yesterday, the great white rhinoceros head of the animal shot by Col. Roosevelt, which was placed in the collection on Saturday.

The visitors arrived at the Administration Building at 2 P.M., and, after visiting the collection, wandered around the Garden as they pleased until 4 o’clock, when they came back for tea. The feeding of the monkeys was the sight of the day, the seven great apes sitting at a long table and manipulating forks with skill, while Susie, the young chimpanzee recently purchased from the monkey expert, Prof. Richard L. Garner, sat at a low table in the very front, the only one of the animals who was dressed for the occasion. Susie was wearing a new style harem skirt. She ate like a lady.”

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Old Print Article: “Lasso-Hunting In Africa,” New York Times (1909)

July 22, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

"His success in roping giraffes is a matter of surprise."

“His success in roping giraffes is a matter of surprise.”

At some point, Col. Charles “Buffalo” Jones put down his gun and picked up a lasso. A big-game hunter of national fame, Jones converted to conservationist in later life and led a roping expedition in Kenya to stock American zoos with all manner of living specimens. From an article about his dangerous mission in the April 3, 1910 New York Times:

“Hunting with a lasso is the latest innovation in the world of sport.

Col. C.J. Jones, better known as ‘Buffalo’ Jones, has cabled to friends in America from British East Africa that he has succeeded in roping with a lasso most of the animals which Col. Theodore Roosevelt brought down with his gun in the same region. He will bring to the United States live specimens of the same animals, whose pelts Col. Roosevelt has sent to the Smithsonian Institution.

In his first cablegram received in this city late this past week, Col. Jones tells of an exciting experience with an immense bull rhinoceros. The creature charged a hundred times before it was securely tied. It demolished the camera, and barely gave the photographer of the party time to escape.

Besides rhinoceri, Col. Jones has captured giraffes, leopards, and cheetahs. His success in roping giraffes is a matter of surprise. A. Radclyffe Dugmore, the camera hunter, who preceded Col. Roosevelt over the country where Col. Jones is now hunting, said that he always had to photograph the giraffe with a telescope lens, so wary did he find them.

Col. Jones carries with him on his safari, a large supply of firecrackers which he intends to use in routing lions from the thickets. He has had great success in capturing mountain lions in the West with a rope, and anticipates no greater trouble with the lion, if he can get him into the open, he said.

‘My lassos,’ said Col. Jones, before he left, ‘are of Russian hemp, hard twisted so they will go through the air with the least possible resistance. Though no thicker than my little finger, my lasso will hold the weight of two tons. When I have made a capture I tie it with a rope through which runs a steel wire.

‘The African lion is a difficult proposition,’ admitted Jones, who has climbed trees to lasso cougars in the West. ‘But I think I can rope him. I don’t know what will happen after I get him roped, being a hunter and not a prophet. I am taking my branding irons, and the lions I don’t want I’ll brand and turn loose to fight another day.’

‘Buffalo’ Jones was accompanied on the expedition by four boon companions, who had been visitors at his famous buffalo range in the painted desert of Arizona. …

The Jones expedition was financed by New York sportsmen, who wanted to give Jones in his sixty-sixth year another chance to distinguish himself. … Before he sailed for Africa in the early part of February, Col. Jones told of his project in the presence of Dr. William T. Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoological Gardens. He said he expected to rope lions, rhinoceri, and other wild African beasts.

‘Why, you’ll be killed,’ exclaimed Mr. Hornaday.

‘Maybe so,’ replied the veteran plainsman calmly. ‘But I never did look forward to dying in bed as a great privileged end, one to be prayed for.'”

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Old Print Article: “Mascot Teddy Is Dead,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1899)

August 6, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

A bald eagle who was mascot to Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders met his maker in New York City in 1899 and was promptly stuffed. (One of its contemporaries was recently in the news.) A report about the perished plumage from the June 12 Brooklyn Daily Eagle of that year:

“Teddy, the bald eagle, the mascot of the Roosevelt Rough Riders in their Santiago campaign, died Friday night in his cage in Central Park. He had not been well for two weeks. About four weeks ago twin bald eagles, which came to be known as the Heavenly Twins, were put into the big cage with Teddy and several other eagles. Teddy had demonstrated immediately upon his arrival last fall that he was a king eagle as he started in to whip every bird in the cage which disputed his claim.

When the twins arrived Teddy thought he saw one of them do something that questioned his authority and he had a tussle with the twin. He won but he went at the other a few days later in mistake for the first one. The result was that the twins fought him together and Teddy was fearfully banged about the cage.

When Superintendent Smith saw him that night the Rough Riders’ mascot was woefully disconsolate at the loss of his prestige. He felt he had disgraced his regiment and for two weeks he brooded over the matter. Mr. Smith was sure the eagle’s heart was broken. When Teddy died Friday night, Superintendent Smith was sure of his diagnosis of the case and he sent him to the Museum of Natural History to have an autopsy performed.

The bird surgeons performed the operation and rendered a verdict of death from consumption. Teddy is now on exhibition as a stuffed specimen of bald eagle in the American Museum of Natural History.”

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A Brief Note From 1900 About Teddy Roosevelt Pardoning A Woman Who Murdered A Philandering Jockey

May 4, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 31, 1900 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Albany–Governor Roosevelt today pardoned Annie Walden, who is serving a life sentence in Auburn Prison for the murder of her husband, James Walden, a horse jockey, whom she shot and killed at the door of the house of a woman who had come between her husband and herself.

The murder took place in September, 1891, and Mrs. Walden has been in prison ever since. Her pardon was requested by Mrs. Beekman de Puyster, a State Charities Commissioner, and other prominent women.

Governor Roosevelt has given a great deal of attention to the case and believes that the circumstances attending the crime warrant executive clemency.”

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“Those Saloon Bedrooms, Located A Drunken Stagger From The Bar, Provided A Haven For Prostitutes”

January 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Theodore Roosevelt, NYC Police Commissioner, 1895.

File this one under unintended consequences. Theodore Roosevelt attempted to reduce drunkenness in 1890s New York City while he was police commissioner and instead encouraged vice of all kinds. From “How Dry We Aren’t,” Richard Zacks’ new Opinion piece in the New York Times:

“During the November elections in 1895, corrupt Tammany Democrats won in a landslide by campaigning against Rooseveltism and dry Sundays. Undaunted, Roosevelt lobbied the Republican-dominated legislature to pass even tougher excise laws. On April 1, 1896, the Raines Law went into effect, expanding the Sunday shut-down hours from midnight Saturday to 5 a.m. Monday, banning “free lunch” counters, and requiring that saloon doors be kept locked and blinds raised to let police peer inside. The law also exempted hotels with 10 rooms, which could serve guests liquor with a meal 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In a New York minute (actually the next few months), more than 1,000 saloons added 10 dinky rooms. Tammany building inspectors didn’t care if some had four-foot-high ceilings or were in former coal bins. “Ten beers and one hard-boiled egg scarcely constitute a meal,” complained Roosevelt, but local judges disagreed, allowing most anything to pass for food. The playwright Eugene O’Neill once described on a saloon table “an old desiccated ruin of dust-laden bread and mummified ham or cheese which only the drunkest yokel from the sticks” would ever dream of eating.

New York — already awash in illegal casinos and brothels — was transformed into the city that never sleeps. These Raines Law saloon-hotels could serve round the clock. Even the Metropolitan Opera added 10 bedrooms to be able to offer late-night wine. And those saloon bedrooms, located a drunken stagger from the bar, provided a haven for prostitutes and a temptation to couples who’d had a few too many drinks. Adding 10,000 cheap beds was bound to loosen the city’s morals.

Roosevelt’s liquor crackdown backfired; so did the Raines Law. The city’s spirit of place, what Stephen Crane once dubbed New York’s ‘wild impulse,’ refused to be tamed.”

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Roosevelt is interred on Long Island, 1919:

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Roosevelt Tries To Recapture The Magic (1912)

July 29, 2011 in Excerpts, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Theodore Roosevelt stumps for votes, 1912.

This classic 1912 picture of Theodore Roosevelt on the stump originally appeared in the New York Times, though the photographer is unknown. Roosevelt was trying to regain the White House, as he split from the Republicans and formed the Bull-Moose Party. His efforts, of course, failed.

With the upturned hat on the table, Roosevelt gives the impression of a magician. Some critics, however, wanted the politician and his domineering personality to disappear. Mark Twain was one such detractor, and he wrote the following text in 1908 when Roosevelt was exiting the White House:

“Astronomers assure us that the attraction of gravitation on the surface of the sun is twenty-eight times as powerful as is the force at the earth’s surface, and that the object which weights 217 pounds elsewhere would weight 6,000 pounds there.

For seven years this country has lain smothering under a burden like that, the incubus representing, in the person of President Roosevelt, the difference between 217 pounds and 6,000. Thanks be we got rid of this disastrous burden day before yesterday, at last. Forever? Probably not. Probably for only a brief breathing spell, wherein, under Mr. Taft, we may hope to get back some of our health – four years. We may expect to have Mr. Roosevelt sitting on us again, with his twenty-eight times the weight of any other Presidential burden that a hostile Providence could impose upon us for our sins.

Our people have adored this showy charlatan as perhaps no impostor of his brood has been adored since the Golden Calf, so it is to be expected that the Nation will want him back again after he is done hunting other wild animals heroically in Africa, with the safeguard and advertising equipment of a park of artillery and a brass band.”

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Silent clip of Roosevelt with some fellow Rough Riders:

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“In The Morning The Elephant Had Suddenly Reappeared In The Town”

April 5, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Theodore Roosevelt, after bagging an elephant. Not even President Palin could get away with this today. (Image by Edward Van Altena.)

The Essayist posted a link to George Orwell’s classic 1936 essay, “Shooting an Elephant.” An excerpt:

“One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism–the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone ‘must.’ It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of ‘must’ is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.”

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Excerpted: John Dos Passos’ “The Happy Warrior” (1932)

May 31, 2010 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

President Roosevelt: Laughing at funny jokes is bully.

John  Dos Passos’ writing is so brisk it’s sometimes hard to catch up to it. A while back, I offered up his biographical sketch about Isadora Duncan. Now I present some of the author’s writing about President Theodore Roosevelt, one of the more interesting characters in American history. The passage comes from 1919, the second volume of the U.S.A. Trilogy. In under one page, Dos Passos describes Roosevelt’s entire Presidency. An excerpt:

     “T.R. drove like a fiend in a buckboard over the muddy roads through the driving rain from Mt. Mercy in the Adirondacks to catch the train to Buffalo where McKinley was dying,
     As President
     he moved Sagamore Hill, the healthy, happy normal American home, to the White House, took foreign diplomats and fat armyofficers out walking in Rock Creek Park where he led them a terrible dance through brambles, hopping across the creek on cobblestones, wading the fords, scrambling up the shady banks.,
     and shook the Big Stick at malefactors of great wealth.
     Things were bully.
     He engineered the Panama revolution under the shadow of which took place the famous hocuspocus of juggling the old and new canal companies by which forty million dollars vanished into the pockets of the international bankers,
     but Old Glory floated over the Canal Zone.
     and the canal was cut through.
     He busted a few trusts,
     had Booker Washington to lunch at the White House,
     and urged the conservation of wild life.
     He got the Nobel Peace Prize for patching up the Peace of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War,
     and sent the Atlantic Fleet around the world for everybody to see that
America was a firstclass power. He left the presidency to Taft after his second term leaving to that elephantine lawyer the congenial task of pouring judicial oil on the hurt feeling of the moneymasters.
     and went to Africa to hunt big game.
     Big game hunting was bully.”

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Early 1900s Ephemera Found Stashed In A Bible, Part 2

February 10, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

Theodore Roosevelt called Chautauqua "the most American thing in America."

Got my paws on a bunch of ephemera that was stashed in an early 1900s bible owned by a family in Ripley, New York. I brought you a transcript of one piece yesterday–an article clipped from the Ripley Express about women cultivating facial beauty. Today I bring you an information sheet called “Chautauqua Tickets.”

Chautauqua, massively popular in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, was a progressive education and culture movement that was begun in 1874 by Lewis Miller and John Heyl Vincent in Southwestern New York State. It grew into a traveling circuit that brought lecturers, preachers, musicians, Shakespearean productions, balled performances, etc., to rural communities across the country. The advent of automobiles, radio and TV eventually diminished the need for barnstorming entertainment.

The flyer (no way to tell the exact date) informs that tickets are available at local businesses, including Avery’s Garage and J.F. Vandrick’s Druggist Shop. The copy reads: “The War Tax is included in the price of ticket. This will save the trouble patrons were put to in former years. Adult Season Ticket…$2.75, Children’s Season Ticket…$1.35.”

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Featured Video: President Theodore Roosevelt In Manhattan, 1918

January 12, 2010 in Politics, Videos | Permalink

This brief 1918 clip of Theodore Roosevelt comes to us courtesy of the Library of Congress channel on YouTube. The former President was in Manhattan to be an honorary pallbearer at the funeral of onetime New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchell. I’m pretty sure you could have baked some beans in Roosevelt’s hat.

According to nyc.gov, Mitchell, known as the “Boy Mayor” because he was elected to the post in 1914 at the mere age of 35, was a crusader against corruption and the drafter of the city’s first comprehensive budget. The city won acclaim for his waste-cutting and proper management, but Mitchell was not reelected. He subsequently enlisted in the Army Air Service to fight in WWI and died in a plane crash while doing his military training in Louisiana.

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