History
In 1884, Grover Cleveland was Accused of Rape. Two Days Later He Was Elected President of the United States
By Ken Zurski
In July 1884, only two years after being elected the governor of New York, a little known lawyer and relatively new politician named Stephen Grover Cleveland became the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
Cleveland’s quick rise in party ranks was no fluke. The Republicans were in disarray. Due to failing health, Chester Arthur the incumbent and former vice president who inherited the White House after James Garfield’s assassination, made only a meager effort to win his parties affections for a full term. Instead Republicans chose James Blaine, a longtime congressman from Maine. The Democrats seized on the opportunity to elect someone who was considered an outsider.
Cleveland fit the bill.
Conservative, religious, and “remarkable unperceptive to new ideas,” Cleveland easily won election to New York state governorship in 1882 and even though he would vote against the public’s favor on issues ranging from reducing fares on New York City’s elevated trains to limiting carriage driver’s work day hours, the public generally liked his “refreshing moral correctness,” so much so he earned the nickname “Grover the good.”
All that would change, however, shortly after Cleveland became the nominee for president.
A Buffalo, New York newspaper, the Evening Telegraph, published a story that put the rotund candidate at the head of a scandal, claiming he had ruined a “respectable” woman’s reputation, seduced her with the promise of marriage, taken away a son that she claimed was Cleveland’s, and dumped her in an insane asylum. Cleveland was a bachelor so there was nothing particularly scurrilous about the relationship with a young woman, especially a widow. But the rest of the accusations, if true, clashed with proper conduct and conventions of a man of Cleveland’s stature. Partisan newspapers throughout the country waved their biased banners; either championing the cause or ignoring and downplaying the reports.
Cleveland’s associates gave an explanation. Without denying the rumors, they claimed a man’s private actions should not be a qualification for political office. A Democratic newspaper, the New York World, run by Joseph Pulitzer, reinforced the claims: “The issue of the campaign is not one of personal character,” the paper reported.
But it got worse. More unsubstantiated reports of women scorned by Cleveland surfaced. It seemed only a matter of time before the Democratic party dropped Cleveland and picked another nominee, a move that would almost certainly tip the general election in the Republicans favor. Cleveland offered another choice. “Tell them the truth” he demanded.
Cleveland never denied knowing the woman named Maria Halpin, but according to him, she was the instigator and ultimately the problem. He was only trying to help a disillusioned woman get her life back together, especially after the birth of an illegitimate child.
Others jumped to Cleveland’s defense. The child in question was not Cleveland’s but Halpin’s other suitor, a businessman named Oscar Folsom. Folsom was also an acquaintance of Cleveland’s. He was also dead. In July of 1875, Folsom was killed in a buggy accident. When the baby was born that September, Cleveland reportedly named the boy Oscar Folsom after his friend.
Halpin wanted more than just help. She wanted a husband and father for a child she was now forced to care for on her own. She claims Cleveland promised to marry her, but didn’t. She also felt betrayed by a man she says took advantage of her. What she wanted now was respect from a man she once trusted. What she got was indifference.
So she cried “rape.”
The rape claim was nothing new to Halpin’s family and close friends, but she kept quiet hoping Cleveland would change his mind. Now, facing misleading reports about her own character, she went public.
Halpin was a 38 -year-old sales clerk at the time working for one of Folsum’s businesses. In her account, Cleveland approached her on the street (actually he had been courting her for some time) and they wined and dined together. Upon returning to her boardinghouse one night, Halpin recalled, Cleveland forced himself upon her. “Violently and without my consent,” she insisted. She remembers Cleveland saying he would ruin her if she ever spoke out. So she asked him to leave and never come back. Six months later, Halpin discovered she was pregnant.
The press mostly ignored her, choosing instead to listen to men like the outspoken preacher Henry Ward Beecher, who defended Cleveland’s honor. Beecher had some womanizing issues of his own to answer to, but Cleveland needed more friends than enemies. He hired an investigator to do some digging and came back with sympathetic results. “He [Cleveland] accepted responsibilities that one man in a thousand has shouldered and acted honorably in the matter,” the report read. Beecher who was still an influential voice, especially among his throng of loyal parishioners, reinstated his support of Cleveland.
Pulitzer’s World went even further by publishing an article which claimed Halpin called Cleveland “a good, plain, honest man,” in an interview. Halpin, the paper reported, disavowed any previous statements against his character. The statement seemed to echo an affidavit drawn up by Cleveland’s lawyers that they wanted Halpin to sign. It read in part: “Shortly after the death of my husband twelve years ago, I removed to Buffalo with my children. Some time after that I met Mr. Cleveland and made his acquaintance which his acquaintance extended over a period of several months. During that time I received from Mr. Cleveland uniform kindness and courtesy. I now have and have always had a high esteem for Mr. Cleveland.”
Halpin under oath said the affidavit’s “statements contained therein are untrue” and refused to sign it. The affidavit also contradicted Halpin’s earlier claims that she would rather “put a bullet trough my heart,” than exonerate Cleveland.
Halpin filed two affidavits of her own, each within days of each other. The first one claimed the circumstances under which her “ruin” was attained, was too “revolting to revel.” The second one, was more forthright. Cleveland, she attested, “accomplished her ruin by the use of force and violence and without my consent.” None of it mattered. Two days after her second affidavit was filed, Grover Cleveland was elected the 22nd President of the United States. “In Gov. Cleveland, in my judgement, we have a leader who is peculiarly fitted to discharge the great trust of his high office and to redeem these pledges to the satisfaction of the American people,” a Cleveland supporter crowed shortly after the results were in.
After Cleveland’s victory, according to author Patrica Miller, “Maria Halpin went down in the history books as a whore.”
The scandal behind her, Halpin went on to marry a tin store owner named Wallace Hunt and died of a prolonged illness at the age of 55. Her only request was that her funeral not be “too public” for fear of “strangers studying her dead face.”
Meanwhile, while in office, Cleveland took a wife. Francis Folsum was a young lady Cleveland had been courting since she was a teenager. Folsum was also the daughter of the late Oscar Folsum, the man Cleveland suspected of fathering Maria Halpin’s son and ultimately the person who posthumously exonerated the president in the public’s eye. Cleveland had guardianship of Francis, Oscar’s daughter from a previous marriage. She called him “Uncle Cleve.”
They were married in the Blue Room of the White House and Francis became the youngest First Lady in history at the age of 21.
(Sources: “Bringing Down the Colonel” by Patricia Miller; Newspaper.com; various interest sites)
Amy Johnson: Britain’s Famous Female Flyer’s Legacy is Eerily Familiar
By Ken Zurski
Amy Johnson is considered the English counterpart to American Amelia Earhart which is a fair comparison since both pioneer women aviators have similar adventures and equally mysterious fates.
Johnson, however, is not quite as well known.
Born in Yorkshire, Johnson earned an economic degree at the University of Sheffield and received her pilot’s license through the London Aeroplane Club in July of 1929. Flying was just a hobby for the 26-year-old Johnson at first. But that would change. “I have an immense belief in the future of flying”, she wrote. Soon enough she had her sights on breaking solo flying records in Europe, similar to what Charles Lindbergh and Earhart were doing in the States.
Her father and biggest supporter, Lord Charles Wakefield helped finance her flights. The wealthy Wakefield, a well-known figure in London, founded an oil lubricant company that bared his name (later it was changed to Castrol Oil). Wakefield bought Johnson her planes which carried family trademark nicknames, like “Jason.”
In May of 1930, aboard “Jason,” Johnson set off alone from Croydon, England and 19 days later landed in Darwin, Australia a distance of 11,000 miles. She was given a hero’s welcome upon returning home.
Later along with several co-pilot’s, including her husband Scottish aviator Jim Mollison, Johnson completed more globetrotting flights and set distance records from London to Moscow and Japan. Accomplishments that received international recognition. Even Lindbergh, the most famous pilot in the world, sent Johnson a letter of praise.
Then in 1941, while working for the Royal Air Force, Johnson was lost during a flight over the Thames Esturay where the River Thames meets the North Sea. The weather was especially bad that day and she reportedly went off course, ran out of fuel, and ditched the plane.
Johnson was last spotted parachuting into the water.
Even today, her fate is debated and rumors circulate about why the plane went down. Some claim Johnson forgot – or failed – to give the correct security codes needed to identify herself as a British pilot and was shot down by friendly fire. Others report she and her aircraft was mistaken for a German bomber. Still others believe she may have been on a secret government mission. All speculation, of course. Like Earhart, who vanished in 1937 while flying over the Pacific, Johnson, who was assumed drowned, never resurfaced.
A search for her body turned up nothing.
The Not So Original Idea to Extend Day’s Light
By Ken Zurski
It was late on March 31, 1918, a Saturday night soon to be a Sunday morning and the beginning of a new month, when Daylight Saving Time officially became a household phrase in America.
It started with a crowd of gawkers lining the streets surrounding the Metropolitan Building in Manhattan. At exactly midnight, the crowd strained their necks and looked up at the huge lighted clocks, each 26 feet in diameter, one on each side of the building. A signal was given and the lights shut down—the largest four-dial clock tower in the world went dark.
A hush came over the crowd.
Time was literally at a standstill.
Then there was a cheer!
The crowd was festive despite the late hour and the start of Easter Sunday. A community chorus sang the “Star Spangled Banner,” and the New York Police band and Borough of Manhattan bands took turns playing “Over There.” The excited throng kept staring at the clock dials frozen in time. It just couldn’t be, they thought.
It was deep in the tower’s belly where all the work was taking place. Hired mechanics had made their way up to the tower’s inner workings and begun the arduous task of advancing the 13-foot hour hands manually. They had two hours to get the job done. Then promptly at 2 a.m., the lights flickered on again. Like magic, the clock tower was once again illuminated. Hundreds of late-night souls strained their necks again to see the clock dials’ hour hands in the glowing beams. The hands were pointing to the number … 3.
Three! It was 3 o’clock! For the first time in history, the nation had moved itself ahead one hour. The crowd shouted and cheered. Daylight Saving Time had officially begun.
“Blasé New Yorkers for whom New Year’s Eve celebrations have lost their thrill,” wrote a reporter for the New York Times, “rubbed their eyes and marveled at the novelty of an Easter Sunday of only twenty-three hours.”
The idea for daylight saving is most often attributed to Benjamin Franklin during his years as an American delegate in Paris in the late 1700s. Thanks to the oil lamp, Franklin would stay up late, usually playing chess, and sleep until noon the next day. One morning, quite early, he was awakened by a sudden noise. He threw open the tight window shutters and was even more startled by the amount of daylight coming into his room. “I looked at my watch,” Franklin later wrote in an article that appeared in the Journal De Paris on April 26, 1784, “which goes very well, and found that it was but six o’clock; and still thinking it something extraordinary that the sun should rise so early. I looked at the almanac, where I found it to be the hour given for his rising on the day.” Perhaps with a mix of astonishment and dry humor, Franklin wrote “that having repeated this observation the three following mornings, I found precisely the same result.”
Ever resourceful, Franklin had an intriguing thought. If he had slept six hours until noon through daylight and “lived” six hours the night before in candlelight, then wasn’t that just a waste of precious light and expense? “This event has given rise in my mind to several serious and important reflections,” he wrote. Franklin went to work figuring out the math. Assuming that 100,000 Parisians burned half a pound of candles per hour for an average of seven hours a day, and calculating the average time during summer months between dusk and the time Parisians went to bed, Franklin concluded that the amount saved, as he put it, would be an “immense sum.” Franklin proposed that all Parisians rise with him, when the sun rises, and to compel the naysayers, he proposed “a tax [be laid] per window, on every window that is provided with shutters to keep the light out.”
“Let guards posted after sunset to stop all the coaches that would pass the streets,” he bravely declared. “Let the church bells ring every time the sun rises. Let cannon(s) be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest.”
Franklin’s dry wit and humor notwithstanding, his scheme alarmed Parisians who weren’t ready for change. They thought Franklin’s idea was madness, and a surprising one at that, coming from an American intellectual and a figure that was so well-liked in France. After he left Paris, Franklin mulled over the idea and marveled at “inhabitants,” this time Londoners, who continued “to live much by candlelight and sleep by sunshine.” Franklin used the economy as an example, saying residents had little regard to the costs of candlewax and tallow. “For I love economy exceedingly,” he explained.
Eventually the idea of extending the day during the summer months was proposed. Instead of getting up by daylight, usually too early, then why not just move daylight later in the day and prolong the evening sun?
“Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings,” wrote William Willett, a London Builder who is credited with the idea of extending daylight. “Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches; and everyone has given utterance to regret that the clear, bright light of an early morning during Spring and Summer months is so seldom seen or used.”
Like Franklin, Willett was struck by the amount of people who kept their blinds shut in the morning hours even though the sun was fully out. If getting up too earlier was the crutch, thought Willett, then why not just stretch the light of the evening hours. European countries would adopt the idea first in an effort to conserve fuel supplies during World War I.
On April 1, Easter Sunday of 1918, Americans did as well.
(Excerpt from “The Wreck of the Columbia: A Broken Boat, a Town’s Sorrow & the End of the Steamboat Era” on the Illinois River © 2012 by Ken Zurski. Used with permission from Amika Press.
Paul Rhymer’s Vic & Sade: The Other Midwestern Radio Couple
Byt Ken Zurski
In the 1930’s, radio programs were popular for their slapstick humor and sound effects. The Vic and Sade show was different. It relied on snappy, witty, and intelligent dialogue to carry the stories along.
Eventually, the dry humor caught on, but it took time. And while most programs showcased the silly antics of its actors, the Vic and Sade show was praised for work behind the scenes, specifically the man penning the scripts: Paul Rhymer.
Rhymer was a journalist and writer from Bloomington, Illinois, who created the show based on his own Midwest sensibilities. The protagonists, Vic and Sade Gook, were a married couple living in “a small house halfway up the next block.”
Rhymer gave the couple a folksy slang. He cleverly wrote each episode and carried storylines over like a serial.
Listeners especially enjoyed Rhymer’s knack for clever words and names. Ruthie Stembottom, Mrs. Applerot, Oyster Crecker and Charlie Razorscum were just a few of the colorful characters.
And the cities were mentioned too. Some you wished actually existed. like East Brain, Oregon; Sick River Junction, Missouri; and one strangely dark place only Rhymer could explain , but everyone else could only imagine: Dismal Seepage, Ohio.
Unfortunately, the Vic and Sade show is mostly forgotten today.
Why is difficult to explain. At the height of its popularity, the Vic and Sade show had a reported “devoted ” listening audience of 7-million. It was also briefly adapted to television in the 50’s. But it’s stars were mostly faceless and while most of the popular radio shows at the time ran in the evening, Rhymer’s show never got out of afternoons. It had an audience of mostly women, like television soap operas, but after ending its 14-year run in 1946, failed to capture the cult hero status that the prime time radio shows did.
In fact, it was another Midwestern couple, similar to Vic and Sade, but more physically expressive, who ruled the airwaves.
Airing in the evening, and coming to into homes from a fictional place called Wistful Vista, the stars, Jim and Marion Jordan of Peoria, Illinois, were better known to their large and devoted fans as Fibber McGee and Molly
A Valentine’s Day Gift: Thank the Halls for the Cards at Least
By Ken Zurski
In the early 1900’s, an enterprising high school drop from Norfolk, Nebraska named Joyce C. Hall began selling perfume door-to–door. Soon he expanded the business to include postcards, specifically the importing, printing and selling of foreign postcards, a popular item at the time.
The possibilities were endless, but not in Norfolk, Nebraska. So Hall boarded a train to Kansas City, Mo. He was armed with boxes full of postcards.
A Hall biographer continues the story this way: “As business picked up, he [Joyce] ventured to the towns served by the railroads running in all directions from the Midwestern rail center. Soon brother Rollie joined him, and they opened a specialty store in downtown Kansas City, dealing in post cards, gifts, books and stationery.”
Then tragedy struck. In 1915, the store was decimated by fire and all was lost, the entire inventory wiped out by the devastating blaze.
The Halls were determined however. With help form a third brother, William, who ran a bookstore back in Norfolk, Nebraska, the three siblings pooled their resources, bought a small engraving firm in Kansas City and began making and marketing their own postcards.
The holiday season was especially busy and the Halls would sell Christmas postcards and tissue paper out of the store. When the tissue paper sold out, they searched the supply room and found a replacement in a stack of “fancy French paper” meant for display only.
They sold it for 10 cents a sheet.
And it too sold out.
So the next year the brothers offered a similar lining paper as a choice. And once again, the more decorative sheets were a big hit. So in 1919, Hall and his brothers began producing and selling their own printed paper for gift wrapping. The paper carried their brand name: Hall Brothers.
That same year they experimenting with cards that had no distinctive purpose other just to say hello or wish someone good luck. They called them “everyday cards.” The cards sold well, but were especially popular for special celebrations like birthdays, anniversaries, and Valentine’s Day.
The company took off and Joyce Hall made most of the business decisions. He offered a change that others, including his brothers, thought was ill-advised. He wanted to change the name. “Hall often went against conventional wisdom. In the 1920’s, he wanted to replace ‘Hall Brothers Company’ on the back of greeting cards with the phrase, ‘A Hallmark Card.’ Everybody in the place was against it, he said, but he made the change.”
Also while others said he was wasting money, Hall began to create and run ads. and soon, Hallmark, the brand, became “the most recognizable in the industry.”
Joyce Hall ran Hallmark for 56 years, eventually giving the president and COO title to his son in 1966. He continued as chairman of the board until his death in 1982.
Today, the date of February 14 or Valentine’s Day is considered to be a Hallmark holiday. That’s because in 2010 the U.S. Greeting Card Association estimated that approximately 190 million Valentine’s Day cards were sent each year in the United States alone.
Even more impressive…the total number of cards produced every year likely tops a billion or more if you count the number of valentines exchanged by schoolchildren.
Happy Hallmark Day!
150 Years Later, in the movie ‘Lincoln,’ Avonia Jones was Nearly Written Back into History
By Ken Zurski
Avonia Stanhope Jones was born in 1839 and in her teens and early 20’s was considered an accomplished actress. Thank her parents for that. Both were theater-types, and Avonia often played roles opposite her mother. In one instance, mother and daughter toured together in “Romeo and Juliet” where Avonia played “Juliet” and her mother played “Romeo.” More details of that “strange” production is not known. And for the most part neither is Jones – known, that is.
According to several internet sources, Jones married young, had no children, and died at the age of 28. Her name is not well remembered, but as an actress, she was important enough to warrant a sitting with the leading photographer at the time, Matthew Brady.
So there’s that.
But as history goes, Jones seemed to do nothing extraordinary or devious, which would have elevated her name or status. As for acting, the New York Times wrote this in her obituary: “Her understanding of mimic character was quick and thorough, and her intellectual attainments of a high order. Few actresses at the present day have had so much experience and received so much praise at so early an age.”
One biographical source claims the most discriminating words against her was a “declamation of the war,” meaning the Civil War, which one can assume she talked about a lot, one-sided or not. More on that in a moment.
Enter Hollywood.
In November of 2012, the movie “Lincoln” opened in theaters. The highly anticipated film, directed by Steven Spielberg, was a commercial and critical smash. It was in essence history come to life, thanks in part to Daniel Day Lewis who channeled his vision of the title role into an Oscar win for Best Actor.
The movie itself, was based on historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “Team of Rivals” and the screenplay was written by Tony Kushner, the Tony Award winning writer of “Angels in America.” Kushner was nominated for an Oscar for his work on “Lincoln.”
Kushner also brought back the name Avoina Jones.
In an interview with Smithsonian Magazine shortly before the movie was released, Kushner said this about Jones: “I thought, I’ve discovered another member of the conspiracy!” Kushner explains that he was looking for a play Lincoln might have seen in early March of 1865. “I found a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ starring Avonia Jones.”
Kushner says Jones, from Richmond, was rumored to be a Confederate sympathizer. “She left the country immediately after the war, went to England and became an acting teacher.” (Note: Jones returned to America in 1867 and died that same year of consumption).
According to Kushner, the backstory is this: “One of her [Jones] pupils was Belle Boyd, a famous Confederate spy. And the guy who was supposed to be in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with her was replaced at the last moment by John Wilkes Booth—who was plotting then to kidnap Lincoln.” So according to Kushner, Jones could have been a member of Booth’s team of conspirators.
It’s all speculation, of course, and Kushner doesn’t elaborate. Still for a writer a “new” discovery is always worth exploration and in a Hollywood production where the facts can be loosely defined by the words “based on a true story,” Kushner had hoped to introduce movie audiences to Jones.
But it was not to be.
Jones and her story never made it into the final script.
However, Kushner had another historical figure he claims was found through good research: William N. Bilbo, a crafty Nashville lawyer and lobbyist for Lincoln. Bilbo tried to bribe “swayable” Democrats to vote with Republicans on the thirteenth amendment, the overall plot point of the movie.
Bilbo was another forgotten soul. Even Goodwin’s book ignores him. Yet, much to Kushner’s liking, Bilbo was left in the script and actor James Spader brought the real life character back to life.
Avonia Jones will have to wait.
Hey, Hey We’re The Muppets: ‘A Crazy Little Band’
By Ken Zurski
Long before Jim Henson became famously known as the man behind the legendary Muppets, his early puppet creations were popular thanks to stints on television commercials, the Tonight Show, and The Jimmy Dean Show where a furry dog named Rowlf, pronounced Ralph, became nearly as popular as the folksy TV host himself.
Jimmy Dean didn’t seem to mind and neither did Jim. It was after all the characters who were in the spotlight, not the performers. So Henson and his team, including fellow puppeteer Frank Oz, were virtually unseen and unknown at the time.
This was between 1962 and 1969, the same time an English rock sensation known as the Beatles took over America. The Muppets played a completely different role than the lads from Liverpool, but in one respect they shared a rather innocuous connection with the Fab Four.
Author Brain Jay Jones points this out in his book Jim Henson: The Biography.
In a chapter titled “A Crazy Little Band,” Jones writes that “it wasn’t Jim’s name on the door or company letterhead, but rather THE MUPPETS.” Even Jim’s son Brian Henson would later admit, “The Muppets were known,” but as for his father: “He wasn’t.”
Apparently, without a face, there was uncertainty as to who or what the Muppets actually were. Plus, if you didn’t know what the name stood for (a Henson invented combination of Marionette and Puppet), the confusion was two-fold.
So the name baffled some. Many thought Jim and his crew listed on guest lists as simply “The Muppets” were a rock band similar to other one-name bands like the Troggs, the Animals, the Hollies or the Beatles.
In addition, Jones writes, Jim had somewhat long shaggy hair “like a businessman beatnik” and a beard. He was also tall and lanky and walked with long strides, similar to the look and style that the Beatles would make famous on the cover of “Abbey Road.”
Add to that the Muppet characters who were transported in black boxes which resembled instrument cases. If you didn’t know who the Muppets were, Jones explains, you might have mistaken them for a rock group.
Even Frank Oz conceded to the confusion. “We were just kind of this crazy little band at the time,” he wrote. “We were the Muppets, but like an act.”
This confusion led to an embarrassing incident after a performance in Los Angeles when a stubborn hotel manager refused to give Henson and his crew a room for the night fearing a rock band would trash the place.
Henson, of course, would get the last laugh. He attempted to correct the problem by having a “serious conversation” with the manger. Jim’s real voice resembled Kermit the Frogs’s in tone and was quiet, calm and reassuring. He rarely swore.
The manger was likely convinced without Henson having to take out one of his “instruments” as proof.
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