STEEL-HULL BARK “DIRIGO” LAUNCHED - February 10, 1894

The sail-driven maritime freight trade was entering the autumn of its era when the Dirigo slid down the ways on February 10, 1894.  Three hundred and fourteen feet long, built to carry four masts that reached 200 feet above her decks, weighing in at 3005 tons, she made a spectacular splash as she crashed into the waters of the Kennebec River in Bath, ME, her sleek black hull gleaming in contrast to the snowy riverbanks.

Dirigo, circa 1910-1915 (Plummer/Beaton photographic collection (courtesy of San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park)

Tens of thousands of coasting schooners (rigged fore-&-aft, many with centerboards – as opposed to fixed keels - for access to shallow waters) had plied the waters of the East Coast, the West Coast, and the Gulf of Mexico since the late 18^th Century, and square-rigged China trade ships had crossed the oceans all over the world for just as long. But all of these sailing predecessors were wooden-hulled ships. Dirigo, a Latin word meaning “I lead” and the State of Maine’s motto, was the first steel-hulled sailing vessel built in the United States. With the construction of Dirigo, A. Sewall & Co. led wooden shipbuilding into the steel age, to much public acclaim.

Arthur Sewall – the man who had built her - hoped that she’d live up to her name and pay for herself. Times were tough as a depression settled on the economy, and no one could afford to have cargo ships lying idle.  Dirigo was designed by J.F. Waddington of Liverpool, England, and she cost $157,000 to build. The steel plates for her hull were produced by Messrs. David Clolville & Sons, and came all the way from Motherwell, Scotland.

To a degree, Dirigo did pay for herself. After she was launched, the tugboat C. W. Morse towed her to Philadelphia, where she was outfitted as a square-rigger.  She was laden with a cargo of 121,000 cases of oil bound for Japan, captained by an old friend of the Sewall family, George W. Goodwin of Calais, ME.  Initially her speed was not outstanding, a concern with the growing competition from steam-driven ships, but as the captain and crew became familiar with the new ship, her efficiency improved, although she was never swift. Goodwin made suggestions for several improvements, but in general was pleased with the way she handled.

Sewall had a dream that within his lifetime, he would see powerful shipyards on the Kennebec River producing the finest steel ships in the world. He did not live to see that dream entirely fulfilled, for his shipyard was the only one in the US to switch to steel. He died in 1900, only six years after Dirigo launched.  Four years after Dirigo, Sewall launched her sister ship, Erskine W. Phelps, to equal fanfare. Evidently Sewall had found the investment in Dirigo profitable.

She did acquire a little claim to fame. In February of 1912, Jack London and his wife Charmian boarded the Dirigo in Baltimore, for a trip around Cape Horn. They sailed to Seattle and returned home in August.

Dirigo had several captains over her 23-year lifetime:

1894-1902  Captain George W. Goodwin, Calais, ME

1903-1904  Captain Lewis S. Colley

1904-1909  Captain George W. Goodwin.

1909-1911  Captain Omar E. Chapman.

1911-1917  Captain Walter M. Mallett.

1917  Captain John A. Urquhart, Brooklyn, NY.

Dirigo remained in Sewall’s fleet until 1915, when G. W. McNear, Inc., in San Francisco bought her. This firm engaged in shipping oil and grain. She worked in Pacific waters for a while, but McNear didn’t hold her for long: she was sold again in March 1916 to C.C. Mengel & Brother, Inc., of Louisville, KY, a lumber company, and then again that November to Axim Transportation Co. of Anchorage, AK, which used Pensacola, FL, as a homeport.  She worked out of that port for six months. Then on May 31, 1917, she sank about 6 miles southwest of the Eddystone Rocks off the coast of Plymouth, England, the victim of torpedoes launched by German submarine UB-23 (the Hans Ewald Niemer). One life was lost.

(Another vessel contemporary to our square-rigged sailing bark Dirigo was an ocean-going passenger steamship also named Dirigo, built in 1898 at Hoquiam (Gray’s Harbor, about 40 miles west of Olympia, Washington) and used in the Alaska trade during the Klondike Gold Rush.  In several photographs dating from 1898, she is shown moored at the docks in Skagway, District of Alaska. These are two separate vessels.)

A few other photographs of Dirigo exist, but most of them are copyrighted against any use without permission. You can see some at Maine Memory Network, a project of the Maine Historical Society which provides an online museum and database. http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/8864

SOURCES
Yakowicz, Susie, “Steel Glory: The Life of Shipbuilder Arthur Sewall (1835-1900)” www.susieyakowicz.com

Emanuels, George, “Early California Voyages” http://www2.cruzio.com/~emanuels/voyages.htm

Wreck Site   http://www.wrecksite.eu/casualty-list.aspx?nat=0

Vintage Maine Images http://www.vintagemaineimages.com/bin/Detail?ln=8864, also part of the Maine Historical Society http://www.mainehistory.org/ and associated with the Maine Maritime Museum http://www.mainemaritimemuseum.org/

The Maritime History Virtual Archives  http://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/Ships/Fourmast_ships/Dirigo%281894%29.html
Dirigo

Maine Memory Network, a project of the Maine Historical Society http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/8864

FUNERAL FOR LINCOLN’S SON EDDY - February 2, 1850

Edward Baker Lincoln (1846-1850)

On February 2, 1850, Abraham and Mary Lincoln stood in Hutchinson Cemetery in Springfield, IL, and bade farewell to the younger of their “dear codgers,” 3-year-old Eddy, who had died the day before after a 52-day struggle with an illness. As the small coffin sank into the wintery grave, the little family, reduced to three, sank into an equally wintery grief.

Because Eddy was so young when he died, not much is known of him. He was born on March 10, 1846, and named after Edward Dickinson Baker, a US senator and former law partner of Lincoln. (Baker was the only sitting senator to be killed in battle while serving as a Union officer.) Lincoln reported to a friend eight months after Eddy’s birth that the baby compared favorably to his big brother at the same age, but was “of a longer order” (taking after his lanky father) than Bobby, who was “short and low” (like his mother).

Eddy is reported to have been a sweet child, precocious and talkative. He wasn’t quite two when in late 1847 the family traveled, by train and steamboat, to Washington City for Lincoln to serve in the US House of Representatives. During Lincoln’s term, the toddler often referred to his father as having “gone tapila,” baby language which his parents took to mean “gone to the Capitol [Building].”

Mary discovered after a few months that life in a few rented rooms across from the Capitol was far from the ideal she had imagined. In Springfield, the status of the wife of a Congressman had powerful, unique standing; in Washington, she was just one more freshman Congressman's wife among dozens. In the spring of 1848, she took the children, Robert (4) and Edward (2), to her family’s home in Lexington, KY. The Todd homestead proved to be an environment far more suited to active youngsters than Mrs. Spriggs’ cramped boarding house on Capitol Hill.

Eddy took after his father in his love for animals.  Writing from Lexington to Lincoln in Washington, Mary relates in May 1848 that Bobby brought a kitten home (“your hobby,” she emphasizes to her husband) which delighted Eddy.  The toddler fell upon the orphan feline with utmost tenderness, insisting that water be brought for it. He hand-fed the kitten with crumbs of bread. When his grandmother (who hated cats) spied the kitten, she had a servant throw it out immediately, deaf to Eddy’s shrieks of outrage.

The Lincolns lavished love and affection upon their children, disregarding discipline and indulging their passions. They called the boys their “blessed fellows” and “dear codgers.”

Eddy was not a robust child. He was prone to sickness. He fell ill in December 1848 while Mary and the children were still at her family’s home in Kentucky. Mary left Bobby behind and took Eddy home to Springfield to nurse him.

A year later in early December of 1849, Eddy came down again with a serious illness, marked by a high fever, brutal coughing fits, and overall exhaustion. It snuffed out his short life within fifty-two days.  Although no one knows for sure, historians speculate that the illness was either diphtheria or pulmonary tuberculosis, also known as consumption. (One online Lincoln research site states that in 1850, consumption killed more Americans than any other disease).

Life after Eddy’s death was nearly unbearable for Mary Lincoln, who mourned throughout most of her third pregnancy. The December 1850 birth of their third son, William Wallace Lincoln, was one factor that helped pull Mary out of her slump. Another which helped her re-emerge into the world after the funeral was the regular attendance that the little family soon took up at Springfield’s First Presbyterian Church. The pastor, Dr. James Smith, had conducted Eddy’s funeral service.  His ministry and wisdom provided Mary with the strength to look to the future. Lincoln benefited from Smith’s work as well, and a deep friendship developed between the Lincolns and Dr. Smith.

Eddy's original gravestone

But the death deeply and permanently marked Mary. Her former bubbly nature succumbed to a hardening personality, and she refused to relinquish any shred of connection with her little boy. With the death of her mother when she was only six years old began a pattern which became tragically familiar over the course of her life. By the time she died in 1882, she had lost two more of her four sons and had seen her husband killed before her eyes. To assuage these strains, she delved further into spiritual matters, skirting the fringes of madness. By 1863, she engaged regularly in séances to contact her sons on the other side. She frightened her younger half-sister Emilie Helm with animated, intense, trance-like descriptions of dreams she had of Willie and Eddy coming in the company of her deceased half-brother Aleck to comfort her. Such tragedy in the life of a woman with an rock-bound core of emotional control would have shaken her foundation; in the life of one whose emotional stability was compromised from the start, it’s a wonder that Mary Lincoln did not go mad.

A few days after Eddy’s funeral, a four-stanza poem about his death appeared in the Illinois State Journal, author unnamed. The last line of the poem ("Of such is the kingdom of Heaven") was etched on Eddy’s gravestone. Most historians guess that Mary or Abraham Lincoln penned the poem; perhaps they both worked on it.

Little Eddy lay in the Hutchinson Cemetery until 1865, when he was relocated to the Oak Ridge Cemetery to be with his father and his brother Willie whose bodies were brought from Washington after Lincoln’s assassination. In the Lincoln Tomb today rest Lincoln and Mary, with their three youngest sons – Eddy, Willie, and Tad (given name: Thomas). Oldest son Robert, the only son to live into adulthood, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Eddy's original gravestone is on display at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield.

SOURCES
Lincoln, Abraham, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, editor, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1955.

Turner, Justin G. and Linda Levitt Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln, Her Life and Letters, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, 1972.

Randall, Ruth Painter, Lincoln’s Sons, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, MA, 1955.

Emery, Tom, Eddie: Lincoln's Forgotten Son, History in Print, Carlinville, Illinois, 2002.

Edward Dickinson Baker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Dickinson_Baker

Wheeler, Samuel P., Lincoln Studies: Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War, http://lincolnstudies.blogspot.com/2008/03/edward-baker-lincoln.html

Emerson, Jason, The Madness of Mary Lincoln, Southern Illinois University Press, 2007.

Abraham Lincoln Research Site, Eddie Lincoln, by Roger J. Norton http://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln67.html

BABIES BORN IN THE WHITE HOUSE

White House, north face, 1901

Twelve babies have been born in the White House. Only one has been the child of a sitting president; all of the rest (except for one slave baby) have been either grandchildren or the children of sitting presidents’ nephews or nieces. In the early decades of the White House, it was not unusual for whole families of the president’s closest staff to live in the Executive Mansion.

One or two of the sources listed below mention specific rooms in the Executive Mansion where these babies were born, but only a couple of them. Some of the White House architecture has changed over the past two centuries, so that some earlier rooms no longer exist. The ground floor today, where the China Room, Library, and other rooms are located, was originally used for servants and slaves quarters; first-floor rooms are formal reception, dining, and dance rooms; and the second (top) floor has served as the private, residential rooms and apartments for the families of the presidents and their closest staff. Most of the earlier presidents had their offices on the second floor, too, until the Oval Office in the West Wing was constructed in 1909.

Jan. 17, 1806:  The first one was a grandson of President Thomas Jefferson on January 17, 1806. His name was James Madison Randolph, a child of Jefferson’s daughter Martha Washington Jefferson Randolph.

December 1806:  The next baby born there was to two of Jefferson’s slaves – Fanny and Eddy – who were part of Jefferson’s household staff. This is the only person of color and a slave born in the White House. There is no readily available record of the name or gender of this child, who only lived a few years, due to ill health.

Mary Louisa Adams (Durand, 1835)

December 2, 1828:  John Quincy Adams had only four months of his administration left when his son John Adams II and wife Mary Catherine, then living at the White House, welcomed a baby girl, Mary Louisa Adams, into the world.

1829-1834:  During Andrew Jackson’s presidency, four children were born to his secretary Andrew Jackson Donelson and his wife Emily, both of whom were also nephew and niece to Jackson’s deceased wife Rachel. Emily served as White House hostess during the Jackson administration.

March 1840:  Martin Van Buren’s eldest son Abraham married Angelica Singleton, a distant relation to Dolley Madison, and their daughter Rebecca was born at the White House during Martin’s presidency. Sadly, mother and daughter suffered serious illness for several months after childbirth, and although Angelica survived, little Rebecca finally succumbed that fall.

March 15, 1846:  James Polk and his wife Sarah had no children, but Polk’s nephew Joseph Knox Walker and his wife Augusta lived in the White House with the President and First Lady.  Walker served as secretary to the President.  The Walkers brought two children with them into the White House, and had two more while they lived there – Sally, b. March 15, 1846, and Joseph, b. December 9, 1847.

December 9, 1847:  Birth of President Polk’s grand-nephew Joseph Knox Walker in the White House. (See entry above.)

Esther Cleveland

September 9, 1893:  Grover Cleveland and his wife Frances are the only presidential couple to have had a child born to them in the White House during the presidency.  Ruth had been born a couple of years before, and public fascination (fostered because of other children residing previously in the White House) resulted in a candy bar named Baby Ruth in the child’s honor.  The Clevelands did their best to protect their children from the paparazzi of the day, and Esther’s arrival on September 9, 1893, surprised the press entirely. The Clevelands guarded their children’s privacy to the degree that the public speculated that Esther was deformed, which she was not.

January 17, 1915:  One hundred and nine years to the day after Thomas Jefferson’s grandson was born in the White House, little Francis Bowes Sayre, Jr., also came into the world in the White House, born to the daughter and son-in-law of Woodrow and Ellen Wilson,  Jesse and Francis Bowes Sayre.

SOURCES

William Seale, The President’s House: A History, White House Historical Association with the cooperation of the National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, 1986.

Susan Edwards, White House Kids, Avon Books, New York, 1999.

Adams grandson info from:  History.com - This Day In History: February 25 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-quincy-adams-son-marries-relative-at-the-white-house

Polk grand-niece and grand-nephew info from:  http://www.penjaccphoto.com/walkerged/fam01332.htm

THE DEMOCRATIC DONKEY’S DEBUT – January 15, 1870

"Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" - Nast, 1/15/1870

One hundred forty-two years ago today, Thomas Nast published a political cartoon in Harper’s Weekly, the first depiction of the Democratic Party as a donkey, kicking the stuffing out of a dead lion. The lion represented the recently deceased Edwin Stanton, a staunch Republican who served as Secretary of War under Lincoln and Johnson. Stanton’s depiction as a lion was unerring: he was highly prominent and influential, and brought dogged determination and unswerving stubbornness to American politics of the day. The passing of this major political opponent was undoubtedly celebrated by many Democrats.

The donkey had been used previously and specifically during the 1828 presidential campaign to represent Andrew Jackson, as an insult (his opponents called it - and Jackson - a jackass). Jackson took the icon to heart and used it on his campaign posters. Nast’s use of the icon encompassed the whole Democratic Party.

Nearly five years later, the donkey was joined by the Republican elephant, in a cartoon published in Harper’s Weekly on November 7, 1874. Again, this was the first notable use of this symbol for the Republican Party. In this cartoon, the elephant (labeled “The Republican Vote”) rampages against the donkey (which is wearing a lion skin labeled “Caesarism,” after the fable of the donkey terrorizing the other animals by disguising itself as a lion), because the Democrats were crying “Caesarism” at the prospect of President Grant trying to run for a third term, which went against protocol. (Grant did not run for a third term.)

"Third-Term Panic" Nast, Harper's Weekly, 1874

(This “third-term panic” is interesting, considering that it happened in the middle of Grant’s second term, two years before the next election. We really don’t see people starting a presidential campaign that early in those days, especially not sitting presidents. We don’t even see sitting presidents mount an aggressive campaign that early these days. But I digress … )

Nast, a German immigrant born in 1840 who became famous for his illustrations in such periodicals as Harper’s Weekly, the New York Illustrated News, and The Illustrated London News, had erratic schooling. Overall, the discipline of school did not come easily to him, and he always just managed to avoid flunking. He managed to spend about a year at the school of the National Academy of Design in New York City. Finances came too tight after that, and he dropped out at age fifteen, when he began working as a draftsman for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. He worked there for three years, then moved on to Harper’s Weekly.

Thomas Nast

More than just an illustrator (although his work earned him the title “Father of the American Cartoon”), Nast used his drawing skill to promote or demote current political issues. His opinions were strong, and he expressed them without hesitation in his artwork. He fought Tammany Hall and the Tweed Ring with such a power that not only did Tweed try to buy Nast’s allegiance (unsuccessfully) for half a million dollars, but Nast’s artful campaign against him was instrumental in the downfall of Tweed and his Tammany Hall machine. Nast's support of presidential candidates was equally influential.

Nast’s cartoons rooted for the underdog. He joined Garibaldi in the Italian’s efforts to unite the Italian provinces. He illustrated the plight of the American Indians in desperate straits, the result of poor federal policies, and of the Chinese immigrants against whom Congress passed many restrictive laws, despite the Chinese’ status as currency in what in effect was a new slave trade, many brought here against their will. He advocated for civil service reform. He supported abolition and integration, and denounced the violence of the Ku Klux Klan.

Other famous works of his include the depictions of Santa Claus and Uncle Sam with which we are so familiar today. Later in his artistic career, he turned to oil painting and book illustration, for which he is hardly remembered today.

Nast’s political contributions over the years finally led to a service position, after his political visibility had dimmed. In 1902, when Nast was 62, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as the US Consul General to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Not long after he arrived, yellow fever broke out, threatening every system and life in the region. Nast remained at his post, assisting diplomatic missions and businesses to escape the contagion. He finally contracted the disease, however, to which he succumbed on December 7, 1902. His body was sent home, and he is buried in The Bronx.

SOURCES

HarpWeek Cartoon of the Day: “Third-Term Panic” (Republican Elephant shown)  http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Year=2003&Month=November&Date=7

Wikipedia: Thomas Nast  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nast

Wikipedia: Republican Party

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_%28United_States%29

Wikipedia: Democratic Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_%28United_States%29

History.com: This Day in History: January 15  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-appearance-of-the-democratic-donkey