Upper Class Gossip of Old New York – 1886-1891 – The Mrs. James G. Blaine Jr. Scandal

(original copyright expired)

This n'ar Romeo and Juliet tale of young love played out in the streets of old New York from about the middle of 1886 through the middle of 1891.

The aspects of many dysfunctional families usually and eventually ends up spilling out onto the street and or public thoroughfare for all to see and dissect. 

While researching a news clipping of a wedding at old St. Leo’s RC church at 11 E. 28^th Street, I ran into the character of the bon vivant pastor in the name of Father Thomas Ducey. His main claim to fame in his Obits, among a few others perhaps not published, was his so-called secret marriage of Marie Nevins originally of Ohio but recently of New York City, married to the son of the former Republican candidate on the 1884 ticket James G Blaine Sr. who lost to Grover Cleveland by a razor thin vote majority but not on Electoral College count.

Secret is a strong word but the bottom line is that the groom presented himself as of age, 18, and able to freely marry his sweetheart.

James G Blaine Jr. - "Gilded Youth" of the "Plumed Knight"

The father of the groom overall treated his son as some sort of property in the little rhetoric bled into the press regarding this embarrassment to him as a very ambitious national political figure - a property rights and or parental rights thing in words of a private letter to Father Ducey not published until after the priest's death. 

James G Blaine Sr. - Mister Republican
The "Plumed Knight"

James G. Blaine Senior was in the political wilderness and no doubt considering his 1888 political options. He even took this wife and daughters on a grand European Tour starting in 1887 which ended with an extended stay at Andrew Carnegie’s castle in Scotland – just to drop a name or two among the lowly.

Blaine Senior was a self-made man. Started a successful newspaper in Maine, backed Lincoln in 1860 and channeled his publishing fortune into Coal Mines in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Not to mention a big bribe or two from Railroads while serving as Senator from Maine before his days as Presidential contender which in the 1876 bid he was dubbed something like not as a dark horse but a “Plumed Knight” (white knight?) to lead the Grand Old Party to new heights of glory etc.

James G. Blaine Junior born 1868, was among his younger children and he, the son, would appear to have met Marie Nevins while her family was vacationing in Maine one summer. One thing led to another no doubt and by the beginning of September 1886 Blaine Junior is presenting himself as a “gentleman” registered at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the best in the city with few rivals, and telling the priest at St. Leo’s that he wants to marry Marie Nevins, no doubt in a mixed religious ceremony, one Catholic Marie and one Protestant Jamie (and or "Jimmie" by some newspaper accounts) Blaine Junior.

The priest marries them in the standard Rectory Marriage for quick and or mixed marriages, no doubt assuming pregnancy as a factor, along the usual verbal contract that the children of such a union be raised Catholic etc.

I suppose all this happened without the Blaines being aware of it for a while or at least until Jamie’s hotel bill at the Fifth Avenue Hotel came due and became overdue etc. I am not too certain if the Nevins knew too much at first. But the witnesses to Marie’s wedding would appear to have been Nevins servants. The Nevins were in quiet repose I would speculate in the fading grand eloquence of the old New York Hotel 721 Broadway, in retirement or semi-retirement, clipping coupons so to speak. 

[Old New York Hotel.] – 1875 (photographer unknown) From the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWNKHAD7&SMLS=1&RW=1067&RH=528

(Old New York Hotel was the first major hotel in New York City to have indoor plumbing when it was built in 1844. It was a preferred stop over for Southerners visiting the city. Jefferson Davis stayed there in 1858. Some of his children and his mother in law stopped over there on their way to Canada in 1865. An early long term manager had cultivated this Southern connection to a genteel aristocracy sort of clientele. It was the ideal quiet place to stay for people of means on a budget to stay the season with its table d'hote in house restaurant prices and menu. Torn down in 1894.)

Marie’s father had been a successful printer/publisher in Ohio and a one-time owner of the Ohio Statesman, a Democratic leaning newspaper. Richard Nevins had also married Florida “Flora” Madery, daughter of the original long term owner and founder of the Ohio Statesman. The Statesman by the way changed owners and politics a few times in the late 1860s after I believe Richard Nevins moved on to New York City.

Richard Nevins was born in New York City in 1831 with his father, being a partner with his brother in the Wall Street brokerage firm of Nevins and Townsend before dying in Richard’s infancy.  Nevins moved to Philadelphia to be raised by his mother’s relatives and legal guardians before striking out in his youth to seek his own fortune in Ohio.

Marie (born Mary in 1866 according to the family Genealogy page) was educated in a convent school away from the world until her encounter with the Blaines.

Whatever the families knew, the couple ran off for a short period and set up housekeeping in Marie’s uncle’s house in Pittsburgh while tempers on both sides no doubt flared and James Junior got himself a job as a newspaper reporter, the first of many jobs he got but never showed interest in or held onto for very long. They went back to New York to rent an apartment “uptown”. He of course was cut off from his parents money and allowance in the short term. Finally with the arrival of James G Blaine III in January 1888, some communication with the Blaines and Junior’s $1800 a year normal allowance was temporarily restored.

I don’t know if Richard Nevins was happy about his convent educated daughter being secreted off in the night to marry what was proving to be a n’ar do well son in law and the son of one of the most powerful figures in Republican politics of the day. I believe that Marie is often quoted in the papers as going to see her mother as opposed to her father etc. as intermediary etc.

Blaine Family Mansion - Augusta Maine

Along with the restored allowance to James Jr., the young Blaines made an attempt to live with the Blaine in-laws in Augusta Maine in the summer of 1888 which only lasted a few weeks and until a big blow-up blow-out cat fight between newlywed Marie and her mother in law.

After that, what the press and the public did not know about all this probably came pouring out in sordid details and even in the New York Times – the New York Times – but then again this was a tragedy, a future styled “soap opera” unfolding with each new detail printed in the press. A lot of “He Said…She Said” stuff getting quoted on both sides and printed in the newspapers of the day and not just in New York City.

What I would imagine is that Blaine Senior did not want was any negative publicity to interfere with his future political gamesmanship for the White House that would have gotten lost in the yellow street journalism of the day.

Marie came back to New York and stayed at the old apartment but without James Junior who stayed with mommy, daddy and his allowance in Maine. No letters were answered from Marie to the various Blaines in their Augusta mansion and sent by Marie.

No doubt as a desperate or perhaps clever ploy to gain public attention to her private woes, Marie Nevins Blaine – or Mrs. James G. Blaine Jr. (her stage name) – signed a theatrical contract to go onto the stage and perform in legitimate theatre.

The proverbial muck hit the fan and the press had their field days.

As a side note, this was not something original on Marie Nevins part to try and cash in on her name, a now famous national married name.

There was another well to do Married Lady – Mrs. James Brown-Potter who as a beautiful young American got dumped in England by her rich hubby, one of the Browns of Brown Bros. Wall Street fame, but who managed to turn misfortune into fortune as a bright new young sensation on the London Stage – cashing in on the poor dear, little woman, jilted wife of a cad, taking on an underdog stance to make it against all odds as a woman that is in late Victorian England. 

Mrs. James Brown-Potter - The American Actress
photo source - http://vintage-ephemera.blogspot.com/2012/12/cora-urquhart-brown-potter.html

With all the stress of trying to maintain a household and not live with her parents who may or may not been giving her support and or cash up to this point and trying to shame the Blaines into taking responsibility for their worthless son, Marie got really sick with an inflammatory attack of Rheumatoid Arthritis that left her bedridden for months and being treated by all the best doctors and treatments, including opiates, in New York at the time. 

Weeks drifted into months and she had yet to make her announced appearance on the stage.  She for a time is noted as with her mother at the New York Hotel before establishing another residence closer to her new show business career, should it ever get off the ground.

Some back and forth on the negotiations and or communications with the Blaines of Maine and with publicity in the press, and with a new circle of theatrical and powerful Democratic leaning friends, Marie moved out of the original apartment and into the Percival Apartments at 230 West 42^nd street to be near those new friends in her attempt at recovery. Her child it would seem was in temporary care of her mother in her residence at the New York Hotel.

Remains of the Percival Apartments in 1924

234 West 42^nd Street – 1924 – Photograph by Wurts Bros. (New York, N.Y.) - From the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWNQXI28&SMLS=1&RW=1600&RH=783

(The above mis-labled I think as 234 W 42nd Street unless new street numbers assigned over time for the Percival Apartments, scraped in this 1924 photo of the previous McKim, Mead & Whites designed exterior decorative work.)

(http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/16/realestate/streetscapes-230-west-42d-street-school-residences-flea-circus-brothel.html …but 230 West 42d Street was built in 1872 as a Roman Catholic school for "boys of refined families," according to the 1893 King's Handbook of New York City.
 In 1882 Percival Wood Clement, a Vermont publisher, banker and railroad investor, hired McKim, Mead & White to completely rebuild the school as a bachelor apartment house. They gave the Percival touches that elevated it above the usual apartment house of the period: multipaned windows, balconies with intricate ironwork designs and a paneled main doorway, all in the character of the Esthetic Movement, then at the forefront of educated taste...)

Marie found a cure in the person of Doctor William T. Bull, a young eligible bachelor, well connected socially, of the Rhode Island founding Bulls, and an innovative successful doctor in his own right. No doubt, his attachment in the press to the cure of Marie Nevins Blaine made him more a famous figure, more famous locally than he was before.

Meanwhile at the ranch, James G. Blaine Sr. has become Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison and James Junior had found a job as clerk on a House committee in Washington DC. He continues to live as bachelor and party goer and general playboy through all this without according to the other side even shelling out a dime of support for his son.

Which finds us in April 1891, with no doubt Marie Nevins Blaine wanting a divorce, to get rid of dead weight and free herself up for a presumed marriage with Doctor “Right”.

Here is where more gossip in the press speculates about the future coupling of Marie Nevins Blaine and William T. Bull in the bonds of matrimony. Marie assembles a dream team of lawyers that I would presume her father has partly assembled. 

George Hoadley

One is former Governor George Hoadley of Ohio now living and practicing law in New York City.  

Robert G Ingersoll

The other is Robert G.Ingersoll, successful lawyer, famous political orator and free thinker aka “The Great Agnostic” willing to debate against religion anywhere, anytime and with anyone. 

                        

And the darling of the recently lost Anti-Tammany Reform ticket 1887 for District Attorney De Lancey Nicoll.

Governor Hoadley had only handled two divorce cases in his mostly business legal career, one of those cases being for fellow Ohioan Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War Washington DC hostess under her father Secretary of Treasury Salmon P. Chase. Kate had also once had Richard Nevins on her short list of suitors rich enough to marry in antebellum Ohio when her daddy was governor.

Robert G. Ingersoll was above all a free thinker and something of a nationally known Clarence Darrow type before there was a Clarence Darrow type per say.

De Lancey Nicolls’ family descended from the original English that took New Amsterdam away from the Dutch and made it New York City.

Nicoll was an anti-Tammany democrat that lost for D.A. in 1887 but decided to run and win with Tammany in 1890. So a little publicity, helping a beautiful and wronged Marie Nevins Blaine, could not hurt and only help his public image.

One of Marie’s lawyers had Jamie Blaine Junior followed by detectives in Washington DC. Rather than embarrass herself further in the press and have a record of her husband’s misconducts in DC documented and to haunt her young child in the future, the legal dream team decided that Marie could not divorce under the “moral misconduct” necessary of one or both parties to get a New York State divorce. Instead Marie Blaine was to hop a train to South Dakota, become a resident of a few weeks and get a "quickie" divorce granted solely for “lack of support”.

In the meantime and with the dream team talking to the press officially and unofficially, the other camp in DC decided to send House clerk James G. Blaine Jr. on a an urgent secret diplomatic mission to Spain in the middle of the night in order to avoid being served with divorce papers.

Marie gets her divorce. She does not go on the stage. She marries Doctor William Tillinghast Bull and lives happily ever after etc. etc. 

Doctor William T. Bull (later in life)

End of the story of dirt and gossip on the rich and famous in late nineteenth century New York.


(All images and photos above would seem to fall within the Public Domain or Original Copyright Expired category except for those otherwise noted.)
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Sarah Palin - (GOP Brand) - Shelf Life

The Roberts Court - Racism Is A Thing Of The Past

The Roberts Court - Racism Is A Thing Of The Past 

Ossian Euclid Dodge – Divorce Clipping – New York Daily Tribune 28 January 1873 – and other bits…

Ossian Euclid Dodge 1820-1876
(public domain)

Clipping - New York Daily Tribune 28 January 1873
(original copyright expired)

Comic Song Writer and Performer Ossian Euclid Dodge 1820-1876 whose most noteworthy accomplishment in life according to his NYTimes Obit would seem to have been to pay $500 for a ticket to Jenny Lind’s first night performance in Boston. (Shades of blatant future Diamond Jim Brady self-promotion and free more than $500’s worth of publicity.)

1850 Lithograph - Ossian E Dodge (left) being Introduced to Jenny Lind by P.T.Barnum
(public domain)

http://www.daytonsbluff.org/DBDF/May2007/DBDF_May2007Txt.html

Euclid Street (St. Paul, MN): Ossian Euclid Dodge, “an eccentric troubadour,” was a nationally-known  journalist, writer and song writer who once had a traveling concert troupe. He was a strict teetotaler who hoped that the public “could learn that a comic song is not necessarily a vulgar one; and that wit which has no fellowship with profanity or coarseness, will be keenly relished by the best and most refined portions of society.”    

Dodge came to St. Paul in 1862 and had a downtown house called “Alpine Cottage.” He sold music and pianos and got into real estate.  In 1873 he named the street after himself.  He was secretary of the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce from 1869 until 1873. What the local papers called a “scandalous divorce” forced Dodge to flee to England in 1874, where he died two years later.

  

More on Ossian Euclid Dodge:

http://kihm6.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/the-chaste-entertainments-of-ossian-euclid-dodge/

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“the laborer is not worthy of his hire” Michael Grimm - GOP Party Line

“the laborer is not worthy of his hire” Michael Grimm - GOP Party Line

“the laborer is worthy of his hire”  Saint John XXIII – JESUS Party Line

http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2014/04/slave-wage-boss-gop-congressman-michael.html

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Best Man Protocol - Advice - Brooklyn Daily Eagle 1 July 1894

Brooklyn Daily Eagle Washington DC Office 1916

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/hec2008005114/

                                                                                                                                        (Original Copyright Expired)

Brooklyn Daily Eagle 1 July 1894 – page 4

http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/50346252/

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Kimball / Connell Wedding - Saint Leo's Church 11 East 28th Street NYC - 27 June 1894 - Best Man / Paul Story Kimball 1872-1896

Source of above images. St. Leo's 11 E 28th Street NYC (exterior top) (interior above) - http://sthughofcluny.org/2013/10/the-churches-of-new-york-xlvi-losses-5.html

Brooklyn Daily Eagle 1 July 1894
(Original Copyright Expired)

Gilsey House (Hotel) - 1876 (Left)
(Image - Public Domain)

Gilsey House Apartments - 29th Street and Broadway 
(Google Maps 2011)

http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/50346252/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Leo's_Church_(New_York_City)

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Canonization of Two Popes - Two Saints? - John XXIII and John Paul II - But Only One Halo!

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Jesse Ludington - Fair Haven Oyster Man - Portrait by artist George Henry Story

Jesse Ludington (1805-1886) - Oil on Canvas
- artist George Henry Story
(Smithsonian American Art Museums)
(public domain)

I have to wonder if the portrait of Jesse Ludington (1805-1886) by George Henry Story - if the subject is in his best and probably only Sunday suit and posed in best possible light or if his attire is the everyday attire of a man in the oyster business of harvesting, inspecting, cleaning, packaging, selling and shipping of the product in a major nineteenth hub of the Oyster business in America, Fair Haven Connecticut.

The direct verifiable genealogical history of the American artist George Henry Story is sketchy in the public records of the Internet.

No doubt more exact records exist on paper and in private family hands to this day but not yet scanned into the new global culture represented by that Internet.

Of the records available and researched thus far, it is a good possibility that the subject Jesse Ludington pictured above was married to George Henry Story’s older sister Julia Ann Story.

No exact record of Julia Ann as being George’s sister is documented at present. Julia is born 1810 and George's parents marriage date is listed as 1806 - a possible family tie and timeline fit.

I have researched and George’s father James died about a month after his birth in January 1835. As such and in world without social government safety nets, there was the family. That George’s vague personal history presented here and there in records is one that he himself may not have been personally aware of or saw no need to present considering he never knew his father and a great deal of personal knowledge of a family history and legacy was lost by being raised without that father. 

But then again, his mother may have raised him in separate living conditions or moved in with a daughter in a larger extended family situation and George had many adults in place to act in place of a missing deceased parent. "It takes a village..." and or a large extended family sometimes to raise a child.

Jesse Ludington married Julia Ann Story in New Haven Connecticut on March 23, 1829 and was married by Baptist minister Benjamin M. Hill.

Other sketchy records indicate that George story may have had another sister from the marriage of his father and mother, James Story and Clarissa Barnes Story. Her name is Elisabeth Story (Armstead) with dates 1826-1864.

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That tagging Jesse Ludington as a possible brother in law of George Henry Story ties in with the name of their daughter Clarissa Barnes Ludington, Clarissa Barnes being George’s mother’s first and maiden name as a point of continuity and a possible genealogical audit trail.  Daughter Clarissa Barnes Ludington by the way married a Duane Epaphroditus Newton later on.

Research shows that Fair Haven, not yet a mere “neighborhood” or district within a later in date greater New Haven Connecticut, was heavily invested in the business of oysters. That many genealogical records reference the move of some Ludingtons from other parts of New England because of the growing oyster production and harvesting industry there.

In the New Haven Directory of Inhabitants 1874, Jesse Ludington is listed as “oysters” by profession at 88 E. Pearl Street as opposed to “oysterman” by other inhabitants of his neighborhood.  I take this to mean that he is more in the upper end of the business as opposed to the dirty everyday hands on business of extracting the product from the waters about New Haven and the northern end of Long Island Sound.

Many genealogical references point to the fact that a “Ludington Buoy” still sits in the waters of New Haven to mark designated territory and state sanctioned by law harvesting rights of a product long extinct from the present region and habitat.

Not to say that Jesse Ludington did not start life in a fisherman’s life or in an oyster boat in his younger days.

That the artist George Henry Story started out his young working life as an apprenticed wood worker in the local shipping industry before moving on to his desired apprenticeship with a portrait painter.  No escaping the local economy of the sea, of fish and oysters, ships and boats I would imagine back then. No escape except by luck, karma or the tyranny of chance.

Jesse’s portrait speaks of a man who has worked with his hands and has the forehead wrinkles of a man closely related to the sea and its many distant horizons.

Also in that pose and time it is difficult to guess the age of the subject which I guess to be at anywhere from mid-fifties to mid-sixties. As such, the portrait would likely have been painted somewhere around the early 1860s and current with G. H. Story’s painting career picking up in Washington DC at the beginning of the American Civil War before his moving onto, with his wife Eunice, into the Bohemian life of a young artist amidst the glamor and excitement of the New York City in little Bohemia centered around Broadway and Bleecker Street then – part of the then "in" - “Pfaff Cellar” - crowd.

That that 1874 New Haven Directory of Inhabitants also has George H. Story, an artist, listed to 276 North Front Street right on the waterfront. The house in Google Satellite view is a rather modest wood structure with a street front that suggests a onetime shack attached to the front of the house, on the waterfront of that house and perhaps a onetime small scale Oyster processing, cleaning and packaging affair to support a young fatherless child by a strong independent self-sufficient Yankee mom? 

                                                                                                                                        (Original Copyright Expired)

That spending the summers in Fair Haven out of New York in the family house was a good time to reconnect to friends and family and during the off season of harvesting Oysters.

That possible brother in law Jesse Ludington was a father figure, or an uncle figure considering age differences etc. Family is sometimes an awkward thing to describe but perhaps George Henry Story has expressed it in a way that he was uniquely talented to express – in his painting.

The 88 East Pearl Street house of Jesse Ludington is one that speaks of a successful later nineteenth business man in the Second Empire style with its Mansard style roof that we here in America or the English speaking world would label as Victorian, like much of Story’s work – dated but a rare glimpse into a bygone and perhaps not examined closely enough as it should have been age – especially in working class Fair Haven Connecticut.

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The (Benyon) Family - Brighton Massachusetts - Auburndale Mansion - 1872 - Artist George Henry Story

The Family - by George Henry Story
(Public Domain)

The great 19^th century successful American Middle Class grand family portrait painting – “The Family” by Artist George Henry Story is said to be of the Boston banker Abner Ingalls Benyon's family, and said to be painted in 1872 in the Benyon Mansion in Auburndale Massachusetts.

Public records show the Benyon family situated in Brighton Mass. where all their children were born.

The year 1872 seems to be highpoint in Abner Ingalls Benyon’s banking career with a listing at the National Exchange Bank as both president and a director in 1872, having working his way up through the ranks first as a Paying Teller in 1856 at this same bank and along the way working as a Cashier, next step up in the banking business, in 1862 at the Brighton Market Bank in Brighton Mass..

The year 1872 saw Abner Benyon named as Vice President of a new Homoeopathic Medical School also operating as the Medical Department of Boston College. This alongside his other duties as one time Treasurer and long term Trustee of same college / university 1872-1883.

Abner Benyon, with a middle name of Ingalls that matches a middle name of the brother in law of the artist, Hannibal Ingalls Kimball, the commission for the painting may have come through a family connection.

Mr. Benyon was all the talk of the east coast in 1882 when he quickly migrated to Canada and Mexico and back to Canada after indictments of embezzlement against him were about to be delivered on him in his then position as president of the Pacific National Bank Boston.

Abner Ingalls Benyon born 1832, died in Toronto in 1888 and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery Cambridge Mass..

Historical Brighton – Volume 2 - 1902

In Brighton –

Abner Ingalls  Benyon married to Ruthanna J Towne

Children:

George Henry Benyon  1857-1926

Carrie L Benyon  Dec 4 1860 – Apr 5 1866

Arthur Ingalls Benyon  Mar 17 1863 - 1903

John W Benyon – dates ?

Elizabeth Benyon – dates ?

Luther Benyon – dates ?

Abner Benyon – dates ?

Presumed Tags to Figures in Painting Above:

1 - George Henry Benyon

2 - Abner Ingalls Benyon 

3 - Arthur Ingalls Benyon

4 - John W Benyon

5 - Ruthanna J Benyon

6 - Baby Abner Benyon (?)

7 - Elizabeth Benyon

8 - Luther Benyon (?)

9 – Unidentified Relative

10- Unidentified Relative

11- (Presumed) Grandmother Towne (?) or Benyon (?)

12- (Presumed) Carrie L Benyon Dec 4 1860 – Apr 5 1866

January 6, 2018

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Lincoln's Favorite Humorist Artemus Ward and His Wartime Bohemian New York Crowd 1864

Source: - Artemus Ward (CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE) A Biography and Bibliography BY DON C. SEITZ 1919 (Don Carlos Seitz 1862-1935) 

(original copyright expired)

The long island of Manhattan seems at every point in history to have staked a claim on the horizon and built its boulevards and structures toward that point towards the rising, setting or noonday New York City sun. And later upward to that very same star itself.

I would guess that around the middle of the American Civil War, that Manhattan was headed toward that turn in Broadway at Grace Church around Tenth Street and headed further uptown to Union Square and uncharted points beyond, and toward those then great sheep meadows and cow pastures of Central Park.

The literary and artsy cognoscenti of the day, the then Bohemians of New York in a watered down crowd, thinned out by the ranks of war, kept up the spirits and voice of culture around the hub of Broadway and Bleecker Street and referenced below.

The spirit or flavor of the moment, the "in" people of the moment, might have been best described by a favorite of the Walt Whitman’s Pfaff cellar crowd Ada Clare defining a Bohemian as a:

 "cosmopolite, with a general sympathy for the fine arts, and for all things above and beyond convention". 
                                                                                       http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/pfaffs/p23/

“…The De Soto, a restaurant on Bleecker Street just

east of Broadway, was his favorite dining-place. Here

there was usually a coterie of choice spirits to aid in

enjoyment of the meal. One of these survives in the

person of George H. Story, the eminent artist, long

curator of paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of

Art, whose wife, Eunice Emerson Kimball, had been a

fellow-member with A. W. in the Thespian Club at

Norway, Maine, long before.

Dining here one day with Story, David Wambold,

the minstrel, Dan Bryant, and some others, one of

the unknown persisted in making some boresome, child-

ish remarks in competition with the genuine wits.

He became a nuisance, but was silenced at last by

A. W., who took out his note-book and gravely inquired,

"What is your age, sir?"

Mrs. Story was a relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson,

who had been a familiar figure in Waterford, and was

a sister of Charles P. and Hannibal I. Kimball, both

men of note in Norway when young and who later in

life had distinguished careers, the first as a great

manufacturer in Chicago and the second as the recreator

of Atlanta, Georgia.

One night the Storys went to the show, sitting well

up front. Cracking a joke that elicited much applause,

Artemus explained, much to the confusion of the lady,

that it was an old one, first used in Norway, Maine,

when he and "Eune Kimball played together in the

Thespian Society!" …

[169]

- Artemus Ward (CHARLES FARRAR BROWNE) A Biography and Bibliography BY DON C. SEITZ 1919 - https://archive.org/stream/artemuswardchar00seituoft#page/169/mode/1up

http://archive.org/stream/artemuswardchar00seituoft/artemuswardchar00seituoft_djvu.txt

(Photos - Above Link) (original copyrights expired)

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George Henry Story - American Artist (1835-1922)

George Henry Story - Self Portrait 1902 - Gift to Metropolitan Museum of Art by Mrs. George Henry Story 1906

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_the_Artist_by_George_Henry_Story,_1902.JPG

George Henry Story. Born Fair Haven, New Haven Conn. January 22, 1835, son of James Story, a sea captain and Clarissa Barnes Story. 

Died November 24, 1922, the Hubert Co-op Apartments 230 West 59^th Street New York City.

Started his career apprenticed as a wood carver for three years 1849-1852 to a Mr. Northrop. Studied art under Charles Hines 1852-1855.  Then studied art in Europe for one year.

Set up a portrait studio in rented space in a corner of the photographer M.B. Brady’s business space in Washington DC in 1860 and 1861. Was subsequently asked as a favor by Brady’s assistant to help pose president-elect Abraham Lincoln for a photograph. 

From there he gained access to White House for several days to sit in on Lincoln at work to make pencil sketches which later were worked into his famous series of Lincoln portraits over the years, some 12 or so in total, one of which is now in the Oval Office, West Wing of the White House. He also painted a portrait of Lincoln's Secretary of Treasury Salmon P. Chase.

Abraham Lincoln by George Henry Story

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_by_George_H_Story_c1915.jpg

Married Eunice Berry Emerson Kimball June 5, 1856 in New Haven Conn.. Eunice, born June 9, 1835, daughter of Peter Kimball, a carriage maker in Norway Maine and Betsey Emerson, first cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Died Jan 14, 1908.

- Eunice was sister to a whole family of brothers, carriage makers including C.P. Kimball of Chicago and Hannibal Ingalls Kimball, the “recreator of Atlanta” in post-civil war Georgia.

- Father of adopted son Paul Story Kimball born January 28, 1872 in Newtown Mass., a nephew of wife Eunice and original child of George Franklin Kimball, a carriage maker of Boston Mass. and Lucretia J. (Wright) Morton Kimball. Died June 20, 1896, aged 24. Was model for Story painting "Dutch Cavalier" and or "Cavalier" at the Wadsworth Museum in Hartford.

Exhibited at 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia received a – Gold Medal – for his showing of three paintings, “The Young Mother” (a first version, lost, as opposed to a later 1881 version at the Wadsworth), “The Young Student” (then owned by Wall Street broker financier David Groesbeck), and “Echoes of the Sea”.

Curator of Painting at Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC 1889-1906, Acting Director of same museum 1904-1905, Curator Emeritus after 1906.

Curator of Painting at Wadsworth Athenaeum Hartford Conn. 1899-1922.

Buried in Green-Wood Cemetery Brooklyn with wife Eunice and son Paul.

Story Family Plot Green-Wood Cemetery Brooklyn New York
(Photo by Bob Collins)

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=58039388

April 21, 2014 - Many Thanks to Bob Collins who has provided Inscription below of above stone, a presumed final statement of love by husband George Henry Story :

Green-Wood Cemetery
Section 145, Lot 29429.
----INSCRIPTION, top and front:'

This memorial was erected to perpetuate the grateful sense of pleasure I had in the conversation of an accomplished woman, a sincere friend, and an agreeable companion.


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