The Easter Rising

24 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by Keith Muchowski in New York City, Woodrow Wilson

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Jeremiah C. Lynch was caught up in the Easter Rising in April 1916.

Easter 2016 was in late March, but a century ago it fell on April 23. If Verdun was the seminal event of winter 1916, and the Somme the pressing issue of the summer, then the Easter Rising was the key event of that spring. Strange as it sounds, it’s hard for people to imagine how international the Great War was. I imagine this is because we think of globalization as a twenty-first century phenomenon. The war was of concern to people throughout the world however. It is worth noting that 200,000 Irish had fought in the British Army up to that point in the war. The Great War had implications for Americans of all nationalities. Irish and German Americans were watching events in far off Europe with especially keen interest. Nowhere was this truer than New York City with its large immigrant communities. The city’s many German-language newspapers covered the war in detail, and the Irish press was doing the same.

One New Yorker who got caught up in the Easter Rising was naturalized American Jeremiah C. Lynch. Lynch was twenty when he came to the United States and remained active in the Irish cause. He was in his early forties when the war began, and was working in Dublin as an insurance agent for the Cotten Exchange when the Easter Rising started on April 24. He was quickly arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to execution. The British were wasting no time; he was scheduled to face a firing squad at 4:00 am British time on May 19. Senator James A. O’Gorman (D-NY) asked the Wilson Administration to intervene with the British government for a stay of execution. Working feverishly, Wilson had directed the American Ambassador Walter Hines Page to press for some sort of clemency. Page was well-positioned to plead for leniency; he was extremely Anglophilic and understood the complexities and tensions under which the British government was working on a number of issues. J.C. Lynch’s punishment was eventually commuted to ten years in prison.

(image/Library of Congress)

April at the NYBG

22 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by Keith Muchowski in New York City, Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father)

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I took advantage of the beautiful weather to visit the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. I was there strictly for pleasure, not work, but it is worth noting that one of the co-founders of the NYBG was William E. Dodge Jr. Dodge was a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt Sr. They created and ran the Allotment Commission during the Civil War, among other things. It’s interesting to speculate on how much more Senior would have done had he not died in his mid-forties. One would have to think he might have been involved in the endeavor to brig a botanical garden to New York City. The garden opened in 1891, and is thus celebrating its 125th anniversary. Enough of that though. Just enjoy the pics.

Arthur Miller’s Brooklyn

19 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by Keith Muchowski in New York City

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Arthur Miller's house in the Heights. The playwright lived in several Brooklyn locations before divorcing and marrying Marilyn Monroe.

Arthur Miller’s house in the Heights. The playwright lived in several Brooklyn locations before divorcing, marrying Marilyn Monroe, and leaving the borough.

I’m sorry about the lack of posts recently. Being the weeks before spring break, it has been a busy time. Plus I got sick with a cold I just could not shake for about two weeks; It really threw off my routine. Today my class and I went to Brooklyn Heights, where we had arranged for an Arthur Miller scholar to talk about the cultural significance of the neighborhood. Walt Whitman, Truman Capote, Hart Crane, and Miller himself are just a very few of the writers who lived in the area at one time or another. Incredibly the Heights as we know it would have been destroyed had Robert Moses gotten his highway where he wanted it. Personally I think Moses gets a bad rap, but in this case it’s tough to argue that his was the right position.

Arthur Miller lived in several houses in Brooklyn Heights, first as a renter and then as a homeowner when his plays began hitting it big on Broadway and the money started coming in. The house above is one that he owned until he sold it and bought a place a few blocks away. According to the story we heard today, he wanted a new place because his ground floor tenants were too demanding. The new house, which we also saw, was smaller but came with no renters to bother him. I’m sure he had way more money by then as well. Incredibly Arthur Miller sold the house you see above to none other than W.E.B. Dubois. Yes, that W.E.B. DuBois. The two knew each other from their mutual involvement in Civil Rights and other causes. That was the craziest story I have heard so far this week.

We always tell our students: history is all around you if you open your eyes to it.

The American Ambulance in Russia

10 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by Keith Muchowski in New York City

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New Yorkers turn out at the the Russian Consulate, 22 Washington Square, for the blessing of Studebaker ambulances headed for the Eastern Front.

New York City’s centrality to the Great War effort is lost on many today. It should not be surprise anyone, though, that Gotham played an outsized role. The city, with its great ports and access to human and financial capital, is right here on the East Coast. What’s more, there were so many Europeans from the various belligerent nations already living here; the 20+ years prior to the war were the decades of the Great Migration. Immigrant communities often lived in their own enclaves with their own churches, schools, and home-language newspapers, and were tuned in to events overseas. Still it must have be an unusual sight when, on 10 April 1916, passersby in Washington Square came across the dedication and blessing of fifteen Studebaker ambulances soon headed for the Eastern Front. An American physician and West Pointer, Dr. Philip Newton, was to be put in charge of the ambulances on the Eastern Front. He had married a Russian the year before and would eventually be made a general by Czar Nicholas II. Russia of course would not remain in the war much longer. There was already growing unrest in the country and the Revolution took place the following year. Still in the spring of 1916 there was still hope.

(images/Library of Congress)

The Golden Flyer

06 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory

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The social changes that the Great War wrought are sometimes overlooked. Certain issues, most notably the Civil Rights Movement here in America and independence for Europe’s colonies–showed some progress in the 1920s and 30s but did not come to fruition until after the Second World War. Two that did succeed were Prohibition and Suffragism. It was not coincidental that the 18th and 19th amendments passed just after the war’s end. Calls for Prohibition and women’s right to vote went back decades prior to American involvement in the war. In 1916 proponents of both did all they could to influence that November’s presidential election, and state and local elections too of course.

On the early spring day of April 6, 1916 suffragists Alice Burke and Nell Richardson left New York in their Golden Flyer for the West Coast. Their objective was to raise awareness and interest in the female vote. They visited forty-two states, by-passing New England, and drove over 10,000 miles in the April-October excursion to California and back. Keep in mind that there were no highways at this time. It was even three years prior to the Army’s 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy in which Dwight Eisenhower participated. And that one only went 3000 miles.

It is somewhat surprising that the Burke/Richardson is not better known than it is. I’m guessing that a reason might be that we already have a standard narrative of the Women’s Rights Movement and this doesn’t fit the formula. Of course that is a problem regarding the Civil War and pretty much every historical subject. The heroes and villains get set and that’s it, at least for many people. Whatever the reason for so little interest in this event, it is an amazing story that deserves more attention than it has received.

(images/Library of Congress)

Thinking of Rube Marquard on Opening Day 2016

03 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Baseball

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It’s Opening Day of the baseball season. I am listening to the Pirates and Cardinals on the radio as I type this. Living in Brooklyn it is hard not to think of the Dodgers this time of year, especially with this being Vin Scully’s final year. It’s hard and sad to imagine.

Rube Marquard as he was when he played for the Brooklyn Robins

Rube Marquard (1889-1980) as he was when he played for the Brooklyn Robins

One of the great Brooklyn players was Rube Marquard, who went 13-6 with a 1.58 ERA in 1916. Two years later Marquand and another Brooklyn Robin, as the team was called at that time, enlisted in the Navy when the team was on a road trip in Chicago. Incredibly Marquard even pitched that day–Saturday 20 July 1918–going seven innings and giving up one earned run but getting a no-decision in a 6-4 Brooklyn win. Marquard did not directly enter the Navy. Secretary of War Newton Baker was still deciding whether or not baseball was non-essential to the war effort and thus cancel the rest of the season. Until a decision was made Rube and everyone else was allowed to finish the season. He did not play well that year, which is not surprising given that everyone was on pins and needles waiting to see what would happen in both baseball and the war overseas. Secretary Baker eventually decided to a allow baseball to continue, but with a shortened season ending on September 1.

His draft registration card. It is interesting to note that he lived in Upper Manhattan, which is not surprising given that he played for the Giants before the Robins. The card lists his profession as ballplayer and calls the team the Brooklyn Ball Club, its proper name.

Baseball even got a small reprieve when Labor Day 1918 fell on September 2, giving the National League an extra day. Richard William “Rube” Marquard was in uniform three weeks later. He never did go to France. Instead he stayed in Brooklyn, stationed to the Navy Yard, and played for the base team, the Mine Sweepers. It’s incredible to see it below but the War Department did not waste any time letting Marquard go. He was discharged on Armistice Day 1918.

Brooklyn was in Chicago playing the Cubs when he enlisted in the Navy. He pitched later that day. Note that he entered the Navy three weeks after the season began. A Note: All sites I have seen list his birth year as 1886. However, all of his official paper work--military papers, census records--say 1889.

Brooklyn was in Chicago playing the Cubs when Marquard enlisted in the Navy. He pitched later that day and entered the Navy three weeks after the season ended in September. A Note: Most sources list his birth year as 1886. However, all of Marquard’s official documents–military papers, census records–say 1889.

Rube Marquard was a fun loving guy who enjoyed vaudeville and the racetrack. He ended up marrying a showgirl and had jobs working at various tracks in the decades after his retirement. His WW2 draft registration card shows him working at Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Track in 1942. Marquard was virtually forgotten until Lawrence Ritter published his oral history The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It in 1966. Five years after that Rube was inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown by the veterans committee. Many believe he was undeserving and that he is one of the weaker HOF inductees. One argument is that he got in due to the nostalgia factor. It is certainly true that after the exhaustion of the Civil Rights Era, all the assassinations, the Vietnam War, and Curt Flood’s ongoing challenge of the reserve clause the 1910s must have seemed a simpler time. Of course we know better. The past was never as easy or uncomplicated as people believe it to have been.

Marquard retired after the 1925 season. He had played eighteen seasons and finished with a record of 201-177.

(images/top: Library of Congress; middle and bottom: U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 and New York, Abstracts of World War I Military Service, 1917-1919 via Ancestry.com)

The Strawfoot

~ a New Yorker's American History blog

Monthly Archives: April 2016