Our German Ancestors Part 1: The Boers and the Webers

 

Previous “family stories” provided on this blog have involved ancestors whose origins were almost entirely in the British Isles --  English,  Welsh, Scotch and Irish.   They were high and low born, rich and poor,  Protestant and Catholic,  farmer and city dweller.  But they all shared one attribute --- all spoke English as a native tongue.   Moreover, most could read and write in English.   This was of immense benefit in America,  a prerequisite to “getting ahead.” 

As the 19th Century progressed,  however,  other groups of immigrants were arriving who were not so privileged, people who did not come here speaking English.  They came from Central and Southern Europe.   Many originated in Germany and some of those German immigrants were our ancestors.  They are on both sides of our family.  In this post we tell the story of the ancestors of Paula, from her mother’s side.  In Part 2, to come, the story is of Jack’s German ancestors.

Going AWOL to America 

Although Germans had been emigrating to America for years, the 1860s were a period of strong movement from that country.   Compulsory military service had been initiated in Germany in 1859  and the Iron Chancellor,  Otto von Bismark,  had initiated an aggressive foreign policy that would eventuate in a series of wars.   For enlisted men, service in the German Army was akin to a prison sentence.    Common soldiers were brutalized and forced to survive in a de-humanized atmosphere,  even in periods between actual combat.  Many recruits died as a result of harsh treatment during basic training.

 Paula's great grandfather, Bernhardt (sometimes”Bernard”) Boers was a “house” tailor,  apparently working for a wealthy family in Drensteinfurt,  Munster,  Westphalia, when he was drafted into the German Army in 1863 or 1864.   Within a short period,  Bernhardt was convinced that military life was not for him.   He went absent-without-leave and returned to Drensteinfurt.   There he married Anna Sumering,  who had worked as a maid in the same wealthy home.  Shortly thereafter,  probably one step ahead of the authorities,  they took off for America.

We know nothing about the origins or parentage of Bernhardt and Anna,  but among all our more recent ancestors,  this couple is the only one whose ocean passage we have been able to document.   “German Immigrants - List of Passengers Bound from Bremen to New York” records the passage of Bernhardt and Anna aboard the steamship,  America, from North German Lloyd in Bremerhaven, shown below.   It arrived in New York harbor on July 18, 1864.   His age is given as 27,  which is internally consistent with other records.  She was 24.

  

The Sidewalks of Peoria

We do not know why the couple settled in Peoria, Illinois.   Bernhardt,  according to the family,  had sister who preceded him to the U.S. and who ultimately went out West.   He also had a brother named Henry who was a Catholic  priest and emigrated later and settled in Wisconsin.   We have found a record of Henry serving briefly in 1870 as a pastor of a German Catholic parish in Kewaskum,  Wis.,  in Washington County. But Bernhardt and Anna did not move on to Wisconsin.  They made Peoria their permanent home and are buried there.

Since Peoria figures large in our German ancestor story,  a word about it is appropriate here.   This city in northern Illinois was the first European settlement in the state and one of the earliest in the Northwest Territory.  Located 130 miles southwest of Chicago,  Peoria lay at the southern end of a long lake and was an area rich in fish and game.  Using the Illinois River,  which flows to the Missouri River and thence to the Mississippi,  access to Gulf ports was possible.   The earliest European inhabitants were French settlers who eventually were made to move when American soldiers built a fort on the site in 1813.   As in Wisconsin,  fertile land could bought cheaply from the U.S. Government and widespread farming began about 1819 with Peoria as the market town.  It is shown below as it looked in 1867.

In 1854 the first of 15 railroad lines was established.   By the late 1800s 120 trains per day left Peoria,  bound for cities small and large,  including New York and Denver.  The city prospered and experienced both an economic and population boom.   Among early industries were meat packing,   casting foundries,  pottery makers,  farm machine manufacturing,  and -- of more than passing interest -- brewing and distilling.

In this vigorous economy,   there was a need for craftsmen like shoemakers and tailors.   Bernhardt Boers soon set up his own tailoring business.   In an 1883 city directory he is listed as a tailor at 408 Oak Street.   His wife may have worked by his side.   A census document lists her occupation as “tailoress.”   Bernhardt and Anna had eight children, of whom two died in infancy.   Among the living was Paula’s grandmother,  Elizabeth,  called “Lizzie” by her brothers,  born in 1876.

The Saloon Keepers Cometh

George Weber,  Paula’s great grandfather,  was born in Peoria in 1847.   We know nothing of his parents except that in the 1900 Census, they are recorded as having been born in Germany.   His occupation was saloon keeper.  We have an 1883 Peoria business directory in which George advertised his establishment,  located at 206 North Fayette St.,  as “saloon and beer bottler.”  He married Albina Huber, a Peoria girl who likewise was born in the U.S., in 1849, to German immigrant parents.  We know little about Albina’s parents, including their names,  except that they eventually resided in Peoria and Albina’s family was involved in the local distilling industry.   A contemporary Peoria directory lists an Emil J. Huber as a saloon keeper,  but we have no records directly linking him with Albina.

Brewing and distilling were common occupations in Peoria of that era.  At one time Peoria produced more whiskey than any city in the United States.  So great was the revenue from the whiskey tax that Peoria share of taxes paid to the federal government was greater than any other town in Illinois, including Chicago.  An abundance of corn and barley,  good water, and ample transportation were reason why beer and whiskey were major Peoria products.   From 1837 to 1919 and the onset of Prohibition,  the city housed 24 breweries and 73 distilleries.  Among them were the Leisey Brewery, below, in which George Weber is said to have worked for a period of time.

A Broken Marriage

The Webers had four children,  of whom the only male child was Hermo Henry Weber, Paula’s grandfather, born in 1877.  He was one of twins.  We know little about his early life, education, or how he met his future wife.  Henry married Elizabeth Boers (whom we met earlier) in Peoria, date uncertain.   They then moved to Independence, Iowa, where Hermo had a job as a bookkeeper for the Maytag Company which in those days was manufacturing farm equipment and, briefly,  automobiles,  as well as kitchen appliances.   The couple’s first two children would be born there,  Hermine in 1911, and our Grandmother Aileen Catherine in 1913.  Aileen was born on January 4, 1913, in Independence,  Iowa,  and baptized at St. Joseph’s Church on January 19.   A third child,  Hubert, was born to Hermo and Lizzie in 1915.

.   At some point the couple with the children moved back to Peoria where marital discord soon was to break up the family.  Hermo has been depicted as a stubborn,  demanding and penny-pinching husband who found it difficult to get along with other people.   As a result,  he frequently was  unemployed.   His behavior became unacceptable to Lizzie.  She sought and was granted a divorce.  After the divorce Hermo stayed in Peoria and moved in with his spinster sister.  Eventually Hermo moved to California where he died.  Neither married again.

  Lizzie was faced with the need to keep her family together despite having a difficult financial situation.  She moved to Milwaukee with the three children and lived for a time with her brothers,  Barney and Max,  who were musicians and cigar-makers.  There this single mother of found work as a stenographer in a local hotel.  She, with her brothers’ help, was able to keep the family together.

           Here we suspend the story of Paula’s German ancestors.  The next installment will tell the story of Jack’s German ancestry.

Friday Lunch Group: 50-Plus Years & Going Strong

Any group that can trace its origins back more than a half century must indeed be formidable.  Particularly in the fast paced atmosphere of the Washington, D.C. area. Such is the Friday Lunch Group (FLG) of which I was an original and youngest member in 1970.   

The FLG began that year as a weekly Friday assembly at the Hawk and Dove Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, Capitol Hill. Originally it was largely staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Through the years the membership has expanded to Senate staffers, lobbyists, and others involved in national policy issues.  Except during the pandemic year of 2020 very few Fridays have been missed during the ensuing decades. At this writing we are in our 52nd year with some 2,450 lunches “under our belts.”

From the outset the idea was to bring together individuals with an interest in and knowledge about national and international issues, who also enjoying a good meal and a libation or two.  The FLG has little structure, except for a chairman whose duty it is to remind members of the meeting and other information pertinent to the gathering, to deal with the dining location, and at times to direct the discussion in order to engage the greatest number of attendees into the conversation.

The Hawk and Dove was a convenient walk from our offices in the House Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill.  The owner was friendly, the food on the American saloon style, and the beer fresh.  We also met from time to time at the officer’s club a DC-area military base where our favorite dish was the “diet special” that was simply a huge patty of rare ground beef and cottage cheese.   At the outset the membership was small and I was the youngest member at 35 years old.  Our first chairman was Harry Cromer.

It was Harry who first laid down the rules for our repast.  Each diner was allowed two beverages at lunch, including alcohol.  (One observer said we were the last “two martini lunch group” left in the DC area.)  One could order any entree on the menu but no appetizer or dessert, just coffee.  The check was divided evenly among the assembled — cash on the barrelhead, no credit cards.  Over the years, those rules have prevailed with a few changes.  Under what is known as the “Pat Holt” exception a member is allowed to substitute two appetizers for an entree.

When Harry left the Hill to work in the State Department in the late ‘70s to become Inspector General of USAID, he moved the lunch to the nearby restaurant of the Watergate Hotel that was walking distance from his office.   There we met and made the friendship of the Maitre D,  Franco Rivera, the banquet manager, John Atus,  and the chef -- Klaus.  When the three opened a restaurant in Rosslyn, Virginia, just across the Key Bridge from the District called the Tivoli, the FLG followed.  For almost 25 years, we met virtually every Friday at the Tivoli.  

FLG at the Tivoli

   

These were “palmy days.”  The food was excellent, the welcome hearty and the service from our once and always stellar from our cranky waiter, Tony.  The location was easily accessible to our membership, one that had expanded beyond Capitol Hill to individuals with other backgrounds, including the military, journalism and academia.  We also began a custom of inviting guests from among sitting and former Congressmen and other involved in international activities.

With Harry’s death, Chips Chester became chair, a position he held for some two decades.  Chips’ reign was characterized by a looser interpretation of Harrys coat and tie dress code.  It also was notable for the standard large plate of cooked spinach that served the table.  Chips detested broccoli as did several others and Popeye food became the standard.

When the Tivoli closed in 2009, the FLG for some months became a homeless wanderers.  We sought to stay in the Rosslyn because of its centrality to our membership.  We tried several restaurants in the area without success and then went to Bethesda where for years we rotated among several sites -- including the Bethesda Country Club, Kenwood Country Club,  and Le Ferme Restaurant in Chevy Chase. 

During Chips chairmanship we began series of FLG trips.  Among the early ones was a three-day visit to Milwaukee, home town of five of our members, called “The ZIG trip,” in honor of the deceased Rep. Clement Zablocki.  During the sesquicentennial of the Civil War (2011-2015) FLG field trips were arranged to battlefield sites in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, several with Park Service guides assigned to assist our historical understanding.  

With wives FLG made visits to Leesburg, Virginia, to tour the George Marshall House and the Woodrow Wilson House and Museum.  Wives also were part of an excursion to Staunton, Virginia, to see a play at the Shakespeare playhouse, visit a winery, and stay at a historic hotel.  The most “far afield” excursion was a trip of five to France, originating in Paris for a barge trip through the canals of Burgundy.

Holiday lunch at Bethesda CC

With Chips’ passing in 2011, I became chairman.  This ushered in one change.  Although we previously had marked the Christmas holiday season a special lunch, spouses were not part of the celebration.   That changed and annually for more than a decade we have been having a larger group that includes wives and, more recently, women staff members who assisted us during our years on Capitol Hill.

The FLG completed 50 years with a virtually unbroken record of weekly lunches only to be confronted in early 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown.  We compensated that year with a weekly email to which FLGers contributed items both serious and comic.  That was supplemented with monthly ZOOM sessions. 

First post-lockdown lunch, Tempo

With the relaxation of restrictions in 2021, we resumed actual lunches. As this is written, the FLG now has two cohorts, one in Bethesda dining at the country clubs mentioned earlier. It chaired by Mike Finley.  A Virginia group that I chair meets at Tempo Restaurant in Alexandria.  Joint lunches occur from time to time.  Currently the active membership is about twenty with another seven or eight at a distance and attending only occasionally.  Our deceased former members number fourteen.

One final note:  We have been accused of being utterly prosaic in not giving the group a name other than Friday Lunch Group (FLG).  In 50 plus years we have never found another that does not sound pretentious.  Ours works well.

 

How I Became “An Agent of the Vatican”

 

A book published earlier this year, entitled “The Enduring Struggle:  The History of the U.S. Agency for International Development and America’s Uneasy Transformation of the World, quotes the former head of the agency’s population program, Dr. Reimert Ravenholt, shown here, calling me an “anti-birth control Catholic zealot.”  Elsewhere Dr. R. has labeled me “an agent of the Vatican.”  Let me set the record straight in a year by year account of those long ago events:

1973.  That year, on behalf of the House Foreign Affairs Committee I led an onsite study of four Asian countries that had been recipients of USAID population assistance.  The study found a number of problems besetting the programs, the most serious being the waste of more than $1 million on vasectomy/IUD materials that had been left moldering unused in warehouses in South Korea and the U.S.  This was fallout from Dr. Ravenholt’s belief that simply supplying birth control materials guaranteed their use.  When the Korea Mission Director, Mike Adler, a distinguished USAID executive, said “no more,” Dr. R tried to have him fired.  Our report backed Adler strongly.  Dr. R. dismissed it as the work of “amateurs.”

1975.  I led a study of USAID family planning programs in six countries of West Africa.  Once again the report detailed problems relating to Ravenholt’s belief that supply created demand.  The program largely was ignoring concomitant health needs in woefully under-served African populations.   The report also leveled strong criticism of USAID contributions to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) for ignoring Congressional strictures against funding abortion and for lending U.S. program funds to senior employees interest-free for personal use, also a violation of law.  By now Dr. R. was seeing me as a prime antagonist.

Early in 1976.  It came to light through the Congressional Record and subsequent news stories that in a memo Dr. R. had demanded the prime supplier of contraceptives for the USAID program produce red, white and blue condoms to celebrate the U.S. Bicentennial.  Jokes about “saluting the flag” abounded.

Later in 1976. Imagine Dr. R’s concern when the Carter Administration put me in charge of the transition at USAID.  He advanced a candidate to be his superior, someone without qualifications but in thrall to him.  That individual subsequently was turned down.  Through his brother, the staff director for a powerful senator, Dr. R made a feint at stopping my appointment as head of USAID’s Asia Bureau. It failed. 

Early in 1977.  After only a few days at the Asia Bureau, I received a communique from the mission director in Nepal saying that some 50,000 condoms foisted on him had reached their expiration date and asked my permission to burn them.  In a response entitled “The Smell of Burning Rubber,” I criticized Ravenholt’s policy that initiated the condoms and suggested instead of burning the Mission bury them.  The memo “went viral” at USAID.

Later in 1977.  Dr. R called an Asia-wide conference of all population staff that was held in the Philippines. I attended. There he proposed ending the program in Indonesia, one that in its initial stages had been promising. He likely expected I would jump at the opportunity.  No way, I responded.  We would double down on success. 

1978:  By now the Asia & Pacific Bureau was moving ahead strongly in health-integrated family planning with robust projects in Philippines, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as well as Indonesia, a start-up in India at the government’s request, and agreement by the Catholic cardinal of the Philippines to a USAID-funded sterilization program.  Soon the Bureau would be accounted the world’s largest single purchaser of condoms and birth control pills.  Dr. R. began complaining about our spending USAID dollars he thought were his.

1979:  Dr. R contracted for and bought 250,000 “menstrual regulation kits,” a euphemism for abortion ensembles involving a variety of hard plastic instruments.  After personally examining the kits and finding that they violated the legal prohibition against abortion, I notified the Administrator who ordered that they not be used.  After they were sent to a warehouse, Dr. R complained that I was against “the most effective means of birth control.” Indeed.

1980.  Dr. Ravenholt was fired.  His assumption is that I had a hand in it.  Not true.  The impetus came from Capitol Hill where he had angered members by an inflammatory public statement that half the women of the world wanted to be sterilized.  The claim had imperiled passage of the foreign aid bill.  Dr. R’s immediate boss (Jewish) and the Deputy Administrator (Ethical Concept) lowered the axe.  I never lifted a finger.  Ravenholt had dug his own grave.  

The Rest of the Story:  In the book cited above an ally of Dr. R is quoted  saying “Both sides of the issue made tremendous mistakes.”  Wrong.  Integrating birth control with maternal and child health care, something Ravenholt distained, was the key to the successes seen throughout Asia and other parts of the world.  My particular pride is in the drastic reduction of family size in Bangladesh as contraception has been adopted. The outcome of the Asia programs should answer Dr. R’s attacks on me as an “anti-family planning Catholic zealot.”  As for being an “agent of the Vatican,” if that claim is sufficient to assure my beatification, let it be.

Note:  The 2021 book cited at the outset of this post was written by John Norris.  Although Author Norris fails to capture the spirit of the many marvelous people who have staffed USAID through the years, he provides a useful “top down” assessment of Agency policy since 1960.  

The Changing Face of Col. E.H. Taylor Jr., Whiskey Baron

 

Arguably, the most important figure in the history of American distilling was Col Edmund H. Taylor Jr. of Kentucky.  During his 92 years (1830-1923) Col. Taylor came to epitomize the whiskey industry and became its chief spokesman to American presidents, the U.S. Congress and high government officials.  Because he insisted that his portrait and signature be prominent on all his products, it is possible to track Taylor’s career through his changing public face.

The earliest picture I can find of Col. Taylor is from a trade card early in his career, a time of trial.  It is the face of a early middle aged man considered a rising star in Kentucky distilling.   Taylor, however, was being squeezed financially in the Panic of 1873 and resorted to fraud, reported selling rights to 7,014 barrels of whiskey when only 4,722 barrels were aging in his warehouse.  Exposed and owing the equivalent of $11 million in current dollars, Taylor was bailed out by rival George Stagg who took over his distilleries and relegated him to being a hired hand.

Eventually paying off his debts, Taylor broke from Stagg and with his sons, built a new distillery he called “The Old Taylor Distillery Co.” in Frankfort, Kentucky.  By  this period,  the Colonel had donned spectacles and assumed the chastened look of someone who has “learned his lesson” and was seeking to regain legitimacy among his peers.  This likeness eventually would find its way onto an advertising watch fob and to the sides of cases of his straight Kentucky whiskey.

Taylor’s return to “bourbon baron” status inevitably brought him into conflict with  Stagg who had kept Taylor’s name because of his stellar reputation for bourbon.  When the Taylors opened their new facility, Stagg sued to stop them using their family name on their whiskey.   Over the next months, a legal battle was waged that ended in the Kentucky Supreme Court with a partial victory for the Taylors.  They could continue to use “Old Taylor,” but Stagg’s “Taylor” products were still allowed on the market.  Thus the emphasis emerged on using the Colonel’s face and signature to proclaim the “genuine” bourbon.  Shown below is a 1903 ad in the Wine and Spirit Bulletin declaring that only the real “Old Taylor” would carry the Colonel’s picture and script.

This introduced the era of Taylor’s aggressive look.  Characterized as “hard to get along with” and often “downright cantankerous and hard-nosed,” the distiller in this photo clearly is making a statement, squinting his eyes at the photographer and turning his mouth downward.  He was now at the top tier of Kentucky distillers and not to be trifled with.  This photo later would be translated into a digital image only slightly less intimidating.

Taylor also was having an impact in Washington, D.C.  A friend of the Secretary of the Treasury, Kentuckian John Carlyle, he played a major role in the shaping and passage of the “Bottled in Bond Act of 1897” and later in gaining support for passage of the first Food and Drugs Act.  He was lobbying Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and later William Howard Taft to declare blended whiskeys as “artificial,” a battle he ultimately lost. The Colonel Taylor shown here may reflect the demeanor of “respectful persuasion” he likely adopted when visiting the Nation’s Capitol.

As he approached an advanced age, a clear effort was made to sweeten Taylor’s image.  In the photo here, his mouth is turned down but the squint is gone.  In formal dress, the white bow tie softens his physiognomy.  Here Taylor seems to be telling us he is “The Elder Statesman” of the liquor industry.  His company used a similar photo on a paperweight.

Another late photo also emphasizes a more benign temperament on the part of the whiskey baron. He has been though a lifetime of struggles and surmounted them them all to emerged in his “golden years” respected by his peers and listened to by people in high places.  The flower in his button hole, likely lily-of-the-valley, bespeaks banking of a fiery temperment in favor of a gentle glide into old age.

Even in death, however, Colonel Taylor could not escape reproductions.  Shown here is a plaque at the present day Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort.  it commemorates the O.F.C. (Old Fashioned Copper) Distillery founded by Taylor in 1870.  The face on the metal sign clearly is taken from the “aggressive” Taylor of late middle age. It even reproduces Taylor’s necktie.  If possible, it is even more baleful a look than the original.

A final look at Edmund H. Taylor, Jr., was provided in a post-Prohibition Christmas advertisement for Old Taylor Bourbon.  The theme is that while the distiller was usually hard to get along with, at the holidays a genial Taylor “gathered his loyal employees around him, and as the bottle of Old Taylor passed among them, he.d tell them, one by one how much he had appreciated all they had done.  And he’d allow himself a small smile of satisfaction.”  Presumably the portrait of Taylor shows that “small smile.”  My thought is that the distiller’s satisfaction instead may stem from being able to satisfy his staff with a swallow of  liquor and skip Christmas bonuses.  

Family Stories: Theophilis Eaton in the New World

 
 Theophilis Eaton probably is the family’s most famous ancestor although he is 14 generations back,  among 8,192 progenitors.  Because of his prominence in American colonial history, however,  we know a great deal about him and his life.  Shown here, Eaton was born about 1890 in Stony Stratford, England,  the son of Rev. Richard Eaton, a Puritan clergyman who originated in Coventry.    Theophilis became a successful merchant and once, ironically,  served as a commercial agent for King  Charles I at Copenhagen.   One genealogy records that he married Grace Miller in 1622.    After her death in 1826,  the very next year he married Ann Yale, a widow with three children from an earlier marriage, and the daughter of Bishop George Lloyd of Chester, England.

The Eaton name is forever linked with that of Rev. John Davenport, shown here, vicar of a important London church, a charismatic preacher and a Puritan leader.   Eaton’s father had baptized Davenport and the two  Puritan worthies were close friends.   Davenport’s church was the center of a prosperous and strongly Nonconformist community.  The pastor himself several times was called before Church of England authorities to account for his views.    Eventually forced to flee to Holland, Davenport soon returned to England and in concert with Eaton organized a scheme of emigration to the New World.    With relatives and fellow Puritans drawn from several parts of England,  the emigrants embarked in late April, 1636,  aboard the Hector, a boat of some 250 tons.  They arrived in Boston harbor two months later, on June 26.   With them was Eaton’s wife, Ann, and her children.

Although the original idea of the company was to settle in Massachusetts and they received a warm welcome from earlier settlers, the company quickly determined that the place was not suitable.   Davenport was concerned about theological issues being debated in Boston that he found difficult.   Eaton could not find a suitable harbor along the Massachusetts coast that was not already occupied by earlier settlers.  But new opportunities beckoned.  The Pequot Indian War which began in April of 1837 with the massacre of nine white settlers,  including three women, had ended with an Indian defeat at the Battle of Great Swamp.   New areas of Connecticut now were open for colonization.   Eaton’s company settled on Quinnipiac,  the site of an abandoned Indian settlement on a spacious harbor looking south toward Long Island Sound.  A illustration captures their arrival.  That was in March 1638.   The settlers called the place “New Haven.”   They intended their community to be a Puritan theocracy in which, by its original covenant: “The word of God shall be the only rule to be attended to in ordering the affayres of government.”

A Tiffany stained glass window in Center Church in New Haven depicts the first Christian service conducted in the settlement on Sunday,  April 1638.  The window contains 2,320 individual pieces of glass and cost $10,000 when installed in 1893.   John Davenport appears in the center of the scene, right hand pointing heavenward,  a Bible clutched in his left hand.   To his left is Theophilis Eaton,  bearing a white beard and full head of hair,  richly costumed and stately of bearing.  He holds the rounded black hat of the Puritan and what appears to be a rifle.    There they stand,  Davenport and Eaton,  Church and State united as one.  Anne may be the woman in the foreground.

Developing the New Haven Colony

These Puritan forefathers then got very busy.  From April 1638 until October 1639 the colonists lived in cave-like shelters along a creek while their town was being planned and built.  Under the direction of Eaton the town was designed around nine squares -- the first example of town planning in New England.  It included a central market and a commons known as New Haven Green that exists to this day.  Although the settlers had among them a surveyor,  historians give credit to Theophilis for the far-sighted layout.   As one has noted:  “It is impossible to conceive of any action of importance taking place during the first two decades of New Haven history without the advantages of Eatonian guidance.”  

Some of Eaton’s settlers,  probably at his urging,  moved out to establish other  Connecticut towns --  Milford,  Guilford and Stamford.  In 1640 the New Haven company purchased a tract of land across the Sound on Long Island and founded a settlement at Southold.   Other sites followed on Long Island and in Delaware as part of Governor Eaton’s grand plan to develop a network of Puritan-controlled coastal trading centers stretching from New England to the Chesapeake Bay.

In the initial years of the colony Theophilis held the title of Chief Magistrate.   With official consolidation of all Puritan holdings under the title of the New Haven Colony in 1643 he became the first governor,  a post he held until his death in 1858.   Historical accounts of his leadership are generally favorable.   Believing with his Puritan brothers that he was among the Elect and that God’s hand was guiding him and his fellows much as God had guided the Israelites in the desert,  Eaton had enormous confidence that his actions were divinely ordained.

With power came wealth.   Eaton built a mansion at a spot that is now the north corner of Elm and Orange Streets in New Haven.   Shown below, it was a common form of manor houses of England at the time.  Contemporaries characterized it as “large and lofty”  with two full stories and a large attic.   It is said to have had 21 fireplaces,  although later authors have disputed that total.  Although Rev. Davenport and one or two other Puritan worthies had large houses,  Theophilis’ was the most impressive in New Haven.   No records exist of its destruction but it was gone by 1730.  

 In Eaton,  as with many Puritans,  there was a strong mix of the secular and the sacred.  The famous American preacher Cotton Mather mentions with approval the tradition in the Eaton household wherein the “pater familias" would call together the children every Sunday evening to see how well they had paid attention to the sermon of the day,  pointing out “in an obliging manner”  difficult theological points and applying the doctrines to the children’s lives.  With that attitude it is no wonder that in 1656 Eaton drafted a strict code of laws for the New Haven Colony.   Drawn on Biblical injunctions and aimed at dictating personal conduct,  this screed subsequently became the basis of many New England “blue laws.”

Trouble in Paradise

Wealthy, living in a large home of 10 rooms with five chimneys and multiple fireplaces,  an unquestioned leaders apparently thoroughly in charge of his situation,  Theophilis should have been a satisfied man.   But the cankerworm of religious dissent,  so much a part of the Puritan rebellion,  was now gnawing at the vital center of his own family.     Our ancestor  Ann Yale Eaton had been converted to Anabaptism,  the forerunner of the Baptist denomination, after she had accepted the teachings of Lady Deborah Moody, shown here, described by one author as a “wise and anciently religious woman.”  This conversion was no small matter.  Ann’s descent into heresy was not only a religious offense but a serious civil crime.

Why did Ann take such a scandalous step to rebel against the beliefs of her distinguished husband and his colleagues?    One account has her overburdened by a household of some 30 people,  relatives of her own and of her husband.  Anne’s inlaws, including Theophilis’ mother and a daughter from his first marriage, are portrayed as strongly antagonistic to her.   Theophilis is reputed often to have sided with his “flesh and blood” against Ann,  largely ignoring her companionship and confiding entirely in his friend,  Rev.  Davenport.  Presumably looking for a way to express her frustration, Ann stopped coming to communion services.  Then word got around that she had converted to heretical Anabaptism .  There ensued,  according to one story,  a confrontation with Rev.  Davenport who subsequently brought her before the church court on 17 charges, including the unspeakable crime of criticizing a minister.

The power of the Puritan clergy had reached a height reminiscent of prelates in fundamentalist Moslem countries of our own day.    Each of the towns in the New Haven colony was governed by seven clergymen magistrates known as “Pillars of the Church.”  None but church members were their electors, thereby disenfranchising at least half the settlers.   These magistrates also served as judges.   Trial by jury,  an established English tradition,  had been dispensed with by the Puritans since no authority could be found for it in the laws of Moses.    Consider then the pain and embarrassment that Theophilis must have felt when his wife, the mother of his children, was called up before this tribunal.   If Ann had been a lesser light in the community,  the Puritan magistrates might have had her publicly whipped and banished her from the colony.  As the wife of the governor she simply was convicted of lying (her religious dissent being the real charge)  and excommunicated from the Puritan church.

In his book “The First Frontier” author Roy Coleman portrays a scene in which John Davenport is presiding in the New Haven Green meeting house and before him sits the Right Worshipful Governor Eaton and a group of other New Haven worthies.   But the wife of the governor has no assigned seat.   She is no longer a member of the church, having been excommunicated.  Ann Yale Eaton sits among the non-members.  “Gossip said that she was asking the Governor for a separate room,”  says Coleman.   After the death of Theophilis she soon returned to England where she died in 1659.  With her on the trip back was Elihu Yale, 11,  a grandson out of her first marriage.   He  eventually would finance the founding of Yale College, now Yale University.  The univerrsity is literally a stone’s throw from the scene of his grandmother’s trial.

Charles Dickens in the Round

During recent years I have sold or given away the bulk of a collection of vintage whiskey containers but have never been able to part with set of china mini-jugs issued about the mid-1980s by the Pick Kwik Wine & Spirits Co. of Derby, England.  In marvelously realized underglaze transfers they dramatize scenes from novels by Charles Dickens to advertise Pickwick Scotch Whiskey.  The base identifies the maker as the John Humphrey Pottery of Stafford, England.

Although virtually all of Dicken’s novels contained line illustrations, over time they represented the work of a number of artists whose styles while differing slightly are similar.  Rendered in black, blue and brown, the images viewed here “in the round” are generally faithful to the original drawings.  With each jug holding at most two or three swallows of whiskey, they are a unique advertising issue.

Appropriately, three of the mini-jugs display scenes from Dicken’s first novel, “The Pickwick Papers,” a runaway success that almost overnight made him a super-star of English literature.  The story follows the adventures of Samuel Pickwick, a genial and wealthy old gentleman, sometimes guilty of over-imbibing, who is the founder and president of the Pickwick Club.  A jug shows him addressing the small gathering suggesting that he and three other "Pickwickians" should make journeys to locales away from London and report on their findings to the other members of the club.  The travels of Pickwick and his friends throughout the English countryside by coach provide the chief subject matter of the novel.

Another jug is entitled “The first appearance of Mr. Samuel Weller.”  Sam does not appear until Chapter 10 when Pickwick meets him working at a tavern and takes him on as a personal servant and companion on his travels.  While Pickwick is a character having an almost childlike simplicity, Weller, a Cockney, is ‘street-wise’. Weller is the more experienced of the two despite his youth and the most intelligent character in the novel.  Sam becomes deeply attached  to the elderly gentleman and helps him in a variety of difficulties.

The most dire of these is Pickwick’s entanglement with a widow, Mrs. Bardell. As his landlady: “She waited on him, attended to his comforts, cooked his meals, looked out his linen for the washer-woman when it went abroad, darned, aired, and prepared it for his wear when it came home, and, in short, enjoyed his fullest trust and confidence.”  Then she misconstrued some of his remarks as a proposal of marriage and swooned in his arms.  Her suit for breach of promise later bankrupted both, sending them to debtor’s prison.

Four jugs commemorate another famous Dickens novel, “Oliver Twist.”  One is entitled “Mr. Bumble is degraded in the eyes of the Paupers.”   Bumble is the cruel and self-important official who oversees the parish workhouse and orphanage of Mudfog, a country town more than 75 miles from London where the orphaned Oliver Twist is brought up.  After marrying the widowed matron of the workhouse, Bumble finds out that his new wife is a sharp-tongued and tyrannical woman who nags and browbeats him in front of workhouse residents.

The other three jugs commemorate Oliver’s sojourn with the master thief, Fagin, and his band of street boys who pickpocket and commit other street crimes.  Shown here, Oliver is being introduced to Fagin and the gang.  Fagin is portrayed as a criminal mastermind who kidnaps orphaned children and trains them to be thieves in return for sheltering and feeding them.  He keeps the money for himself.  Next to him is his chief lieutenant, known as “The Artful Dodger.”  Dodger, characterized as a child who acts like an adult, wearing adult clothes that are too large for him. 

Another of the gang is Charles Bates, shown here talking to Oliver about the fine points of professional thievery.  He is the only member of Fagin's gang to reform. In the final chapter Dickens states that Charley left London to work as a farm hand, later becoming a shepherd.  Dicken wrote: ”Master Charles Bates…fell into a train of reflection whether an honest life was not, after all, the best. Arriving at the conclusion that it certainly was, he turned his back upon the scenes of the past, resolved to amend it in some new sphere of action.”

The last Oliver Twist jug depicts one of the most chilling scenes in all of English literature:  the murder of Nancy,  who has been deeply protective of Oliver, by the brutal Bill Sikes, an adult criminal associated with Fagin who believes Nancy has betrayed the gang.   Nancy is portrayed as highly sympathetic and readers have been known to weep at reading Dickens wrenching description of her demise.  

The last jug is a reference to Dicken’s 1850 novel, David Copperfield, but has nothing to do with the story.  On the left is Wilkins Micawber, one of the author’s most delightful characters.  Often down on his luck financially, Mr. Micawber is known for his optimism, identified with the belief that "something will turn up." In this depiction he is telling Copperfield, far left, “David, this whiskey is superb.”

Note:  This is the second article on this blog to feature Samuel Pickwick and whiskey.  A post on August 14, 2015, describes his general association with strong drink through the years.  It is entitled:  “Mr. Pickwick — ‘The Old Gentleman’ Advertising Alcohol.”